Free Tool
Enter a US phone number below and this free carrier lookup returns the carrier name that currently owns the line, its line type -- cell phone, landline or VoIP -- whether its recent activity says it is likely disconnected, and whether the number belongs to a known TCPA litigator. The area code alone cannot tell you: in North America the same prefix is issued to both mobiles and landlines, and number portability means a line may have moved between them. It never tells you who owns a personal number: the only owner names NumberBroom returns are business names.
5 free lookups per day • No credit card • We never sell your data
A phone carrier lookup, sometimes called a cell phone provider lookup, queries the routing records that telecom operators maintain for every number in service, and returns the carrier, or service provider, that owns the line right now. That "right now" is the whole point: carrier is not a fixed property of a number.
The operator the number is currently routed to -- T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, or one of the hundreds of smaller carriers and MVNOs. Because of local number portability, this changes whenever the subscriber switches provider, so any carrier value cached more than a few months ago is unreliable. How to find out which carrier a phone number belongs to explains why the prefix cannot tell you.
Whether the number is a mobile, a landline, a VoIP line or toll-free. This is the field that decides whether an SMS campaign can reach the contact at all, and it is the one area codes are most often wrong about.
Whether the line's recent activity says it is out of service or nobody answers it. This is a separate check from line type, because a dead mobile still reports as a mobile, and it is why a lead list bought two years ago dials so many dead lines.
Whether the number appears in a court-sourced database of serial TCPA filers. Most free carrier lookups do not return this, and it is the field with the most money attached to it.
Line type is the single most useful field on a purchased lead list, because it determines both whether the call can connect and how much legal risk it carries.
| Line type | What it means | Should you dial it? |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile | A cell phone on a carrier network. Can receive both calls and SMS while in service. | Yes -- but mobiles carry the strictest TCPA consent rules, so check consent and litigator status first. |
| Landline | A fixed line at a physical address. Cannot receive SMS. | Connects, but any SMS campaign will fail silently. Remove before texting. |
| VoIP | An internet-based number (Google Voice, Twilio, and similar). Cheap to create and discard. | Usually not. VoIP is over-represented in low-quality and fraudulent lead lists. |
| Toll-free | An 800/888/877-style business line, billed to the receiver. | No. It is a company switchboard, not a consumer lead. |
| Disconnected (any type) | The line is out of service or nobody answers it. Not a line type of its own: a dead mobile still reports as a mobile, so this tool flags it from recent line activity. | No. Dialling these wastes agent time and depresses your connect rate. |
North American numbering plan prefixes are not split by line type. The 202 area code contains both mobiles and landlines, and local number portability means a number issued as a landline in 2004 may be a mobile today. Only a carrier-level lookup is current.
TCPA statutory damages run $500–$1,500 per violation, and a small population of serial filers deliberately seeds their numbers into purchased lead lists. Most free validators return line type only, leaving that risk in your file.
This tool is for spot-checking. To clean a whole lead list, upload it as CSV, TSV, Excel or PDF: NumberBroom validates every row at the carrier level and removes known TCPA litigators in the same job, then hands back a dialler-ready file.
Carrier-level phone validation, activity scoring and the TCPA litigator check. A 5,000-number list is $880; rows past 2,000 are $0.16. No subscription.
Small lists pay a flat $5 rather than pricing out to a few cents. Above 25 numbers you pay $0.20 each through 2,000 rows, then $0.16, then $0.08 past 5,000.
A carrier lookup queries live telecom routing records to find out which carrier a phone number currently belongs to, along with its line type -- mobile, landline, VoIP or toll-free.
Because local number portability lets subscribers keep their number when they switch providers, the carrier on a number can change at any time. A lookup reflects the network the line is routed to today, not the carrier that originally issued it.
Accuracy depends entirely on whether the tool queries live carrier data or a cached copy. A lookup against current routing records is accurate at the moment you run it.
Tools that resolve numbers from a static area-code or prefix table are frequently wrong, because the same prefix carries both mobiles and landlines and portability moves numbers between carriers continuously. NumberBroom queries carrier data per lookup rather than serving a cached result.
Enter the number into a phone validator that queries carrier data. The validator looks it up against carrier records and returns the line type -- mobile, landline or VoIP. Area code alone cannot tell you: in North America the same prefix can be issued to either a mobile or a landline, and number portability means a number may have moved between the two since it was assigned.
Yes. You get 5 free carrier lookups per day with no credit card, and each one returns the carrier name and line type plus a TCPA litigator check. To check more than a handful of numbers, upload a CSV, TSV, Excel or PDF list and pay $0.20 per number ($5 minimum), no subscription.
Type the US phone number, add your email address, and press Check this number. In a few seconds you get the line type (mobile, landline or VoIP), the carrier serving the number today, whether the line looks disconnected, and whether it belongs to a known TCPA litigator. The email tracks your 5 free lookups a day and is where the result is sent; there is no account and no card.
Yes. VoIP is reported as its own line type, separate from mobile and landline. This matters for outbound calling because VoIP numbers are cheap to create and discard, so they appear disproportionately in low-quality and fraudulent lead lists.
A TCPA litigator check compares a phone number against a court-sourced database of people who repeatedly file Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawsuits against businesses that call or text them.
Because TCPA statutory damages run from $500 to $1,500 per violation, a call to one of these numbers that breaks the TCPA's rules is expensive. Most free phone validators do not include this check -- this one does.
Upload a CSV, TSV, Excel or PDF list of up to 10,000 rows. NumberBroom auto-detects the phone column, shows the exact row count and cost before you pay, then returns a clean file holding only the rows that passed, with line type, carrier, activity score and scrub status appended to each. Litigator matches are removed, not flagged. Pricing is $0.20 per row, with a $5 minimum, and no monthly fee. See pricing.
No, and neither does anything NumberBroom sells. It never returns a private individual’s name, address or demographics from a phone number. Two paid checks come close without crossing that line. Name Match, at $5 a number, tells you whether a number belongs to a name you were already given, and shows the business’s Google listing when it is a business line. Business Line Lookup, at $0.70 per contact on a list, appends a business name and industry only where the number is a registered business line -- anything that is not a business line comes back blank.
An LRN lookup returns a number's Location Routing Number: the 10-digit network address of the switch now serving it, which is how calls reach a number after it has been ported. The authoritative data sits in the Number Portability Administration Center and is restricted to authorized users, so LRN lookup is a carrier-facing routing service. This tool reports what that routing data is used to determine, the carrier and line type, not the LRN itself.
Many phone brands sell service on another company’s network, so a lookup can return the network operator of record rather than the brand printed on the subscriber’s bill. The number may also have been ported to a new carrier since that bill was issued.
Yes. The lookup accepts any US number and reports the line type as mobile, landline, VoIP or toll-free alongside the carrier, flags a line whose recent activity says it is likely disconnected, and it says so when carrier data is unavailable rather than guessing. For a landline, the carrier returned is the operator of record, which is not always the company that bills the customer.
Upload a CSV, TSV, Excel or PDF list, see the exact cost, pay once. No subscription.
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