The Reassigned Numbers Database (RND)

Around 35 million US numbers are disconnected and made available for reassignment each year, according to the FCC. A relinquished number must be aged for at least 45 days before it can be issued to someone new -- 45 to 90 days for a residential number, and up to a year for a business one, under 47 CFR 52.15(f)(1)(ii). It is a floor, not a fixed interval. Once the number does change hands, any consent you held for the previous subscriber becomes worthless.

This is one of the more unfair-feeling TCPA exposures, because a caller can do everything correctly at collection time and still end up liable. The RND exists to give those callers a defence.

How a query works

You submit two data points: the phone number, and a date. The date is the day you obtained consent, or a later day on which you were reasonably certain the consumer could still be reached at that number -- the last time you spoke to them there, for example, or the last time they updated their contact details. You get one of three answers:

There are four ways to send them. The web interface takes up to 50 numbers at a time and answers on screen. A file uploaded through the web interface, by SFTP or through the API can hold up to 1,000,000 numbers, and a single API call takes up to 1,000. Every number queried counts as one query against your subscription, whichever route it takes.

How much the database holds: the FCC's own page reports over 305.9 million geographic and toll-free numbers as of February 17, 2023, and the administrator's FAQ, in the version dated August 2023, over 361 million. We found no newer total from either as of October 13, 2026. The database grows every month as carriers report, so today's count is higher.

How to get access

Access is by registration, not sign-up. Per reassigned.us:

1. Email [email protected], saying whether you are a Caller (querying for yourself) or a Caller Agent (querying for clients).
2. Complete the registration form they send back, naming a Primary Contact and an Authorizer -- someone in management who can confirm the Primary Contact works for you.
3. Applications are processed within 7 calendar days.
4. Choose a subscription and prepay it, by card or ACH, before the first query.

A Caller Agent also needs a signed Letter of Authorization from each client before querying for it, and each query has to be made under that client's own Company ID, so one query cannot be shared across clients.

What it costs

Prices as published at reassigned.us/pricing on September 24, 2026. The full table has twelve tiers, including 3A and 4A between those shown, and 3-, 6- and 12-month versions of each. It is labelled interim pricing and can change.

The four elements of the safe harbour

To rely on it, you must establish all four:

1. You had prior express consent to call the number before it was reassigned;
2. You called the number after reassignment;
3. Before calling, you checked the number against the most recent RND data and received “no”;
4. The call happened because the database erroneously returned that “no”.

One more thing the rule says plainly, and it is worth reading before you rely on any of this: the caller carries the burden of proof and persuasion on every element. This is an affirmative defence you have to evidence after the fact, not a status you hold. In practice that means keeping the query itself -- the number, the date submitted, the response, and when you got it -- because a “no” you cannot produce a record of is a “no” you cannot rely on.

Two things the RND will not do

It does not catch wrong numbers. The RND answers one question: has this number been permanently disconnected since your date? If a consumer gave you a mistyped or fabricated number, it was never theirs, nothing was disconnected, and the RND returns “no” while you call a stranger. The FCC has acknowledged this gap and pointed callers toward commercial databases, which carry broader identity data.

It does not identify litigators. A serial filer's number is active and has not been disconnected, so it returns a clean “no”. That check is entirely separate.

Maine requires it for telephone sales calls

The federal rules make the database voluntary. Maine does not, for one kind of call. Public Law 2023, chapter 570 (L.D. 2234), approved March 25, 2024, added the database to Maine's telephone solicitation statute, 10 M.R.S. § 1499-B. Subsection 6 makes it a violation for a telephone solicitor “to fail to use the reassigned numbers database to verify that a consumer's telephone number has not been reassigned prior to initiating a telephone sales call to that consumer”.

The reach is narrower than “any caller”:

• A telephone sales call is a solicitation call to a consumer to sell consumer goods or services, or to obtain information for such a solicitation. It includes calls made with automated dialing or recorded messages.
• A consumer is a Maine resident who is a residential telephone subscriber, and the statute's “telephone number” means a residential number. A telephone solicitor is anyone “doing business in Maine”, which the statute defines as making telephone sales calls to consumers located in Maine, whether the calls start inside or outside the state.
• The section does not apply to a call made in response to and at the express request of the person called; a call to someone with whom the solicitor has an established business relationship (a voluntary two-way relationship based on a purchase or transaction in the previous 18 months, or an inquiry or application in the previous 3 months, and not since ended); a call made primarily in connection with an existing debt or contract that has not been paid or performed; or certain non-commercial solicitations by an organization's own volunteers or employees.

The statute also lists conditions that protect a solicitor from liability if it can demonstrate them: written compliance procedures, trained staff, a recorded list of numbers it may not contact, a process that keeps calls off that list and the national do-not-call registry (using a copy obtained no more than 31 days before a call), monitoring and enforcement, routine use of the reassigned numbers database before sales calls, and that any later violating call was the result of error (§ 1499-B(6), paragraphs A to F). A failure to comply is an unfair and deceptive act under the Maine Unfair Trade Practices Act, and the Attorney General may seek civil penalties of up to $10,000 for a first violation and $25,000 for each later one (§ 1499-B(10) and (11)).

Maine is the only state requirement this page has verified. It does not say that no other state has one.

When it is worth the subscription

Checking a whole calling list against the database before a campaign, rather than one number at a time, is usually called RND scrubbing. It is the same query run in bulk, by file upload, SFTP or API, and each number's answer carries the same safe harbor, on the same four conditions.

The RND earns its cost where consent is old -- debt servicing, renewals, long-cycle nurture, reactivation of dormant leads. The further a call sits from the consent date, the higher the chance of reassignment. Collections is the clearest example, and TCPA compliance for debt collection covers how the safe harbor fits alongside Regulation F's own reassignment check for texts.

For fresh telemarketing leads called within days of opt-in, reassignment risk is low and the RND adds little. Those lists need validation, line type and a litigator check instead -- which is the gap NumberBroom fills at $0.20 per number ($5 minimum), no subscription.

Frequently asked questions

Cameron Hoffman

Founder, NumberBroom · 10 years in telecommunications and marketing

Cameron Hoffman is the founder of NumberBroom and has spent 10 years working in telecommunications and marketing. He built NumberBroom after repeatedly watching outbound teams dial purchased lists that were full of dead numbers, landlines and TCPA litigators.