Carrier Lookup
Find the assigned carrier and line type for a US or Canadian number, straight from numbering-plan data.
# free & rate-limited · no signup · live results from the same engine as the API
Since the engine is the same one the API runs, a key does not buy you a better answer. It buys volume, bulk jobs and a signed receipt.
Have a file? Clean up to 20 numbers free, no account.
Three quick steps
Enter a number
Paste the phone number to identify.
Lookup runs
We resolve the assigned carrier, line type and rate center.
Read results
See carrier, line type, and location context.
Assigned carrier
The carrier the number block is assigned to (US/CA).
Line type
Mobile, landline, or VOIP classification.
Rate center
The number's rate center and state.
Honest limits
Ported numbers may show the original carrier; live HLR checks are a separate product.
Who uses it
Routing
Route messages by accurate carrier data.
Compliance
Separate mobiles from landlines.
Analytics
Segment audiences by carrier.
Developers
Enrich phone records programmatically.
Where the carrier answer comes from
Most carrier lookup tools resell a telecom API and cannot tell you what is behind the answer. Ours runs against a local copy of the North American Numbering Plan's central-office code assignments — the public record of which company each six-digit prefix was allocated to. That is why it is free and instant, and it is also why it has a specific, knowable limit, described below.
| Field | What it tells you | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Carrier | The company the number's prefix block was allocated to | Authoritative +1 numbering records, refreshed daily |
| OCN | The carrier's four-character Operating Company Number, stable across renames | Authoritative +1 numbering records |
| Rate center | The geographic exchange area the prefix belongs to | Authoritative +1 numbering records |
| Line type | Mobile, landline or VoIP | Numbering-plan classification (libphonenumber) |
| Region | The state or province the rate center sits in | Authoritative +1 numbering records |
NPA-NXX: how a number maps to a carrier
A North American number is NPA-NXX-XXXX: area code, then the three-digit central office code, then the line number. Carriers are allocated numbers in blocks keyed on the first six digits, so those six digits — the NPA-NXX — are what identify the carrier. The last four digits identify a line within the block and say nothing about who operates it.
We hold more than 200,000 of these prefixes covering roughly 2,800 operating companies across all US states, Canadian provinces and the +1 territories. The file is republished by NANPA as carriers file changes with the FCC, and our copy is rebuilt daily.
Assigned carrier is not always the current carrier
This is the limit that matters, and every free carrier lookup shares it. Since number portability, a subscriber can take their number to another carrier while the prefix block stays allocated to the original one. The numbering plan records the allocation, not the move.
In practice: for a number that was never ported you get the right answer, and for a ported number you get the carrier it started with. There is no way to tell the two apart from the numbering plan alone — resolving the current carrier requires a live HLR or LRN dip against the telecom network, which costs money per lookup and is a separate paid product.
Any free tool claiming real-time ported carrier data is either doing an LRN dip it is not charging you for, or it is guessing. We would rather name the limit.
Why so many numbers come back as Bandwidth, Twilio or Sinch
If a lookup returns a name like Bandwidth, Twilio, Telnyx, Peerless or Sinch (formerly Onvoy), the number was allocated to a VoIP wholesaler rather than a consumer carrier. These companies hold enormous blocks and resell numbers to apps, SMS platforms, contact centres and virtual-number services.
That is useful signal on its own: a number on a VoIP wholesaler's block is far more likely to be a temporary or programmatically provisioned number than a phone somebody has carried for a decade. For fraud screening that often matters more than the brand name.
Toll-free numbers work differently
800, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877 and 888 numbers have no geographic central-office assignment. They are managed by the toll-free registry rather than allocated in NANPA's geographic files, so there is no rate center and no state, and the responsible organisation is recorded separately from the carrier. We label these honestly instead of inventing a location for them.
FAQ
Is this carrier lookup tool free?
Yes. Guests get 5 lookups a minute and 50 a day, no signup. A free account has 200 credits a month, no card, and core validations cost 1 credit each.
How accurate are the results?
The free tool runs the same engine as the API, so what you see here is what an integration returns. Where we cannot determine something we say so rather than guessing — a confident wrong answer is worse than an honest gap.
Can I use this in bulk or via API?
Yes. Paste 20 numbers with no account, or sign in and clean 100 a month on the free plan. Paid plans take longer lists, CSV jobs, webhooks and higher rate limits, from $3.16 per 1,000 core lookups.
Does it detect ported numbers?
No. Results come from numbering-plan assignments, so a ported number may show its original carrier. Live portability (HLR) checks are a separate connected-data product.
How do I find which cell phone carrier a number belongs to?
Enter the number above. The answer comes from the authoritative central-office code assignments, which map each six-digit NPA-NXX prefix to the company that was allocated it. That is the assigned carrier — accurate for numbers that were never ported, and the original carrier for numbers that were.
Is this a mobile carrier finder or does it work for landlines too?
Both. Every +1 prefix in the numbering plan is covered, whether it was allocated to a wireless carrier, a landline operator or a VoIP provider, and the result tells you which of the three it is.
Does it work for numbers outside the US and Canada?
Carrier identification does not. Our dataset covers the +1 North American Numbering Plan only. Numbers from other countries still get validity, country, region and line-type parsing, but no carrier name.
What is an OCN?
The Operating Company Number, a four-character code the industry uses to identify a telecom carrier. It is stable even when a carrier renames or is acquired, which makes it the reliable key when you are matching carriers across systems.