How to get a SAN for the National Do Not Call Registry

A SAN — Subscription Account Number — is how the FTC identifies you when you download the National Do Not Call Registry. You get one by registering directly at telemarketing.donotcall.gov. No vendor can sell you one, and no vendor can use the registry on your behalf without you having one.

That last point causes more confusion than anything else in this area, so it is worth being blunt: every scrubbing service, ours included, requires you to hold your own subscription. DNC.com states it plainly on its own product page — a subscription "can be obtained directly from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)". If a vendor implies otherwise, ask which SAN appears in the access record, because that is the field the rule asks you to keep.

The fees for fiscal year 2026, which began 1 October 2025:

• The first five area codes are free.
• $82 per area code beyond the first five, per year.
• $22,626 is the maximum any one entity pays, which buys every area code.

The fees are set annually by the FTC and announced in the Federal Register, so check the current year's notice before budgeting. The figures above come from the Commission's August 2025 announcement of the FY2026 fees.

Two practical notes. First, if you only call into a handful of area codes, the free tier may cover you entirely — the five-free allowance is per entity, per year, and a surprising number of regional operations never pay anything. Second, a service provider you nominate accesses the registry under your SAN; the FTC does not charge the provider separately for that.

Once you have the SAN, the record you need to keep about it is short. Four fields, listed in 16 CFR 310.5(a)(11): who accessed the registry, the date, the SAN used, and the campaign it was for.