How do you find where a phone number is from?

Look at its first digits. The country calling code, such as +1 or +44, picks the country, and the digits after it often pick the area. In the United States and Canada, for example, the three digits after +1 are the area code, and each area code covers one region, from part of a big city to a whole state or province. Mobile numbers work the same way, except their prefixes usually point to the carrier that got the number range instead of a place.

Google's open source libphonenumber keeps this data for every country: which prefixes belong to which area, which carrier each mobile range was given to, and which time zones a prefix covers.

Tool description

Enter a phone number in international format, starting with + and the country code, and press Look up number. You get:

  • The country, with its flag, and the calling code
  • The number type, such as landline, mobile or toll free, and whether the number fits the country's numbering plan
  • The number in E.164 and international format
  • The location its prefix is assigned to, such as a city or region
  • The original carrier of a mobile number
  • The current local time in each of the number's time zones, updated every minute and shown in your date and time format settings

The original carrier is the one the number range was first given to. Numbers can be ported, so the number may be with another carrier now.

The lookup runs on our server with libphonenumber's data. The number isn't sent to any other service.

AI assistants connected to the Rapid Tool Set MCP server can run the same lookup as phone_number_area_lookup.

Features

  • Finds the country, area and original carrier of a number without calling it
  • Shows the local time at the number, so you know whether it's a good time to call
  • Tells whether a number fits its country's numbering plan

Limitations

  • A valid number fits the numbering plan, but that doesn't mean anyone uses it.
  • Numbers in the United States and Canada show as landline or mobile, because their prefixes don't tell them apart.
  • Mobile and toll free numbers usually have no location, and a number for a whole country lists all of its time zones.
  • The time zone data names one zone for areas that keep the same time. Estonian numbers, for example, show Europe/Bucharest, which keeps the same time as Tallinn.