Types of business phone numbers
Choose from Twilio’s extensive inventory of business phone numbers to reach customers.
Twilio phone numbers
Get instant access to phone numbers in 100+ countries. Twilio has global inventory, APIs, and software for you to engage your customers at scale anywhere in the world.
Choose the US phone number type that’s best for your use case
Each phone number type has different capabilities to engage customers in the most effective way.
|
Features |
A2P 10DLC |
Toll-Free |
Short code |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Number recognition |
Local prefix |
Branded number |
Branded number |
|
Message throughput range - Messages Per Second (MPS) |
3-180 MPS |
3-150+ MPS |
100+ MPS |
|
Filtering for spam/content |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
MMS support |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Voice support |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Delivery receipts (DLRs) |
Carrier |
Handset |
Handset |
|
Stop opt-out |
Managed by Twilio |
Managed at network level |
Managed by business |
|
Provisioning time |
2-7 days |
2-7 days |
6-7 weeks |
Features to manage your business phone numbers
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Number hosting
Use the business phone numbers you already own to send and receive messages with Twilio’s communication APIs.
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Number porting
Transfer your phone numbers from another provider quickly and easily—making the switch to Twilio is simple.
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Messaging and Voice Insights
Analyze your voice and message performance, identify and debug issues, optimize delivery to engage your end users.
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Number verification
Know that every Twilio Phone Number goes through extensive testing, including technical evaluation, capability testing, and traffic monitoring.
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10DLC and Toll-free onboarding APIs
Register your 10DLC and toll-free phone numbers through our onboarding API and software to streamline the process.
Compliance features for phone number management
Regulatory and compliance APIs
Keeping up with local regulatory requirements is a headache. Twilio makes it easy to manage those requirements for compliant global communications.
Trust Hub
Create a verified Business Profile and manage your phone number verification in one place to join our fully verified communications ecosystem.
Phone number lookup
Determine if a phone number is valid before you send messaging or voice traffic by identifying the line type as mobile, landline, VoIP, or temporary number.
How to get started with Twilio phone numbers
Get new numbers
Search for and instantly buy the numbers you need to reach customers. Filter based on location or number type to find exactly what you need from our extensive inventory.
There’s strength in numbers
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4,800+
carrier connections
180+
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100%
verified 10DLC traffic
157B+
messages sent/received per year
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Phone number pricing is combined with your product usage. Visit the pricing page to estimate the total cost of your use case.
Phone numbers FAQs
You can get access to a business phone number in a few minutes with Twilio. Sign up for a free account if you don’t have one already. There’s no credit card required and your account is loaded with $15 in trial credits to get started.
In the Twilio Console, you can search and select a phone number you’d like based on area code or number type. Use your trial credits to buy the number. Just remember that you’ll need to complete a verification process (per regulatory requirements) before you can start sending messages or make calls from it.
If you already have business phone numbers, you can follow our guidance for porting in numbers to bring them over from another provider to Twilio.
See our porting guidelines
With Twilio, you can get started with a business phone number for free.
You will only be charged by usage for messaging or voice calls for your phone number. See a pricing overview here.
The verification process for 10DLC is an additional cost that includes one-time registration fees and recurring campaign fees.
10DLC phone numbers
Application-to-person 10-digit long codes (A2P 10DLC) are numbers with a local prefix. These are traditional numbers like 415-555-6456 with a specific area code. But 10DLC numbers are registered to a business and sent over routes reserved for application-to-person messaging.
Toll-free numbers
10-digit phone numbers with a standard prefix (like 833, 888, 800) that are voice and SMS-enabled. Toll-free numbers are familiar and recognizable ways for a customer to contact a business.
Short codes
These are 5-digit numbers or codes that can be numerical (56546) or correlate with a code like (VOICE). They can handle high-volume text and picture messages, but are more expensive than other number types.
Alphanumeric Sender IDs
This is a sender ID based on your company or brand name that you register. It can be used for one-way messaging at high volumes in certain countries.
National numbers
These are non-geographic phone numbers for a specific country. They aren’t tied to a local area code and they can be reached from anywhere within the country for the same rate.
You can get a toll-free number through Twilio by purchasing a toll-free phone number in the console.
Before you can send or receive messaging or voice traffic on your new toll-free number, you must go through a verification process. This validates who you are and what you’re sending to end-users.
Text +1 (855) 747-7626* (1-855-747-ROBO) with a US phone number to check if it is served from Twilio.
* Twilio named a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for CPaaS