Guide
How to Remove Invalid Phone Numbers From a List
How do you remove invalid phone numbers from a list?
Short answerRemove invalid phone numbers in two passes: a free format check that drops cells that cannot be a phone number, then a carrier lookup that finds numbers that look right but are not valid, are disconnected or are outside the US. NumberBroom never charges for unparseable or non-US numbers, and refunds numbers its lookup could not answer.
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An "invalid" phone number in a list is rarely one thing. Some cells were never phone numbers: a blank, a note someone typed into the wrong column, two numbers pasted into one cell. Some are real numbers that no longer reach anyone. Some are perfectly good numbers in a country your campaign is not calling. Each needs a different check, and only some of them cost anything to find. This page goes through them in the order a list meets them, and says exactly what a NumberBroom scrub does with each one.
How do the two passes work?
The first pass is a format check, and it is free. It asks whether a cell can be a phone number at all: enough digits, a real area code, one number rather than two. Anything that fails is not worth looking up, because there is nothing to look up. The second pass is a carrier lookup, and it is the only way to answer the questions a spreadsheet cannot: whether a number that looks right is actually assigned, whether it is a mobile, whether it is still connected, and whether it belongs to a known TCPA litigator. Good phone number scrubbing runs both, in that order, so the second pass is only paid for on numbers that survived the first.
What should you fix in the spreadsheet first?
- One number per cell. A cell holding a mobile and an office number reads as neither. Split them into two columns, or two rows.
- Keep the country code on international numbers. A number from outside North America written without its + prefix cannot be told apart from a broken US number. It will not be charged either way, but with the prefix you will know which it was.
- Leave the formatting alone. Brackets, dashes, dots, spaces and a leading 1 are all read correctly, and an extension such as "ext 12" is stripped, not counted against the number. The file you get back keeps every number exactly as you uploaded it.
- Do not bother removing duplicates. A number that appears twice is looked up once and charged once, so de-duplicating first saves nothing and loses the second row. Scrub + Grade is the exception: it charges each row, because each row is graded against its own name.
What happens to each kind of number in a scrub?
| Kind of number | What happens | Charged? | In your file? |
|---|---|---|---|
| A cell that cannot be a phone number: too few digits, letters only, two numbers in one cell, a 555 area code | Counted before you pay as "pre-filtered as unparseable" and never looked up | No | No |
| A valid number outside the US: Canada, Puerto Rico and the other territories, the Caribbean, any other country | Counted before you pay on its own line, never looked up, and returned to you in a separate file | No | No |
| A number the list repeats | Looked up once; every copy gets the same answer | Once (Scrub + Grade: once per row) | Every copy that passes |
| A number on your own do-not-call list, if you are signed in | Removed before any lookup and counted separately | No | No |
| A US number the lookup reports as not valid | An answer, not an error. Removed in both the full scrub and Litigators only, and counted on its own as "Not a valid number" | Yes | No |
| A disconnected number: an activity score of 30 or below, out of 100 | The full scrub removes it; Litigators only keeps it, with the score in activity_score | Yes | Full scrub: no. Litigators only: yes |
| A number the lookup never answered, after one retry | Left out rather than passed unverified, and counted as "could not be checked" | No: refunded to your card when the job finishes | No |
The order matters. Cells that cannot be numbers, numbers outside the US and numbers on your own list are all settled before the price is worked out, so the total on the upload card is already net of them. Only the last row of the table involves money moving back after the fact.
Quick check: what happens to these numbers?
Pick an answer to see whether it is right, and why.
What happens to numbers outside the US?
The +1 country code is shared. Canada, the US territories and a group of Caribbean countries all dial as +1 with a three-digit area code, so a number can look exactly like a US number and not be one. NumberBroom's litigator screening covers US numbers only, and a number that cannot be screened can never be certified as screened. So a number outside the US is not checked at all: the upload card counts it on its own line ("outside the US: not checked or charged"), the price leaves it out, and every one of them comes back to you in a separate file, with your columns as uploaded, to download from your dashboard or the completion email. The email also names the first 50, so you can see at a glance which numbers in your file were not screened. If every number in the column is outside the US, the card says there is nothing to scrub and nothing to pay.
This rule is recent, and a real list is why. In October 2026 a list of a couple of thousand numbers arrived with a few dozen from Canada, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands and several Caribbean countries mixed in. Our phone-data provider could validate those numbers but had no litigator data for any of them. Until that week, numbers like those were looked up first and refunded afterwards. Now they are counted out before you pay.
How are unanswered numbers refunded?
Checkout charges for every number up front, before the scrub runs. If our phone-data provider still has not answered a number after a retry, that number is left out of your file, because a number nobody checked cannot be passed as clean. When the job finishes, the difference goes back to your card: what you paid, minus what the answered numbers would have cost on their own. On a 100-number list with three unanswered, that is $20.00 minus $19.40, so $0.60 back. On a list small enough to sit on the $5 minimum, it can be nothing, because the answered numbers still cost $5. The completion email gives the exact amount, and a card refund can take 5 to 10 days to appear.
What do you get back?
One file, holding only the rows that passed, with every original column kept and the line type, carrier, activity score and scrub status added (the data hygiene page lists each column). There is no column marking litigators: those rows are removed and counted, not delivered. If your list held numbers outside the US, a second file returns those rows exactly as you uploaded them. Alongside the file you get the counts for every reason a row was removed or could not be checked, which add up to every US number on your list, and a dated record of compliance screening. That record counts only numbers that were actually screened, so a number that could not be checked, or that the lookup reported as not valid, is never counted as one, and a number outside the US never appears in it at all.
Frequently asked questions
Am I charged for invalid phone numbers?
Not for a cell that cannot be a phone number, not for a number outside the US, and not for a number our phone-data provider never answered: the first two are never priced, and the third is refunded to your card when the job finishes. The one case you do pay for is a US number the lookup reached and reported as not valid. That lookup happened and returned an answer, so it is charged like any other, and the row is removed from your file in both the full scrub and Litigators only.
Do you check Canadian or Puerto Rico numbers?
No. Our litigator screening covers US numbers only: the 50 states and Washington, DC, toll-free numbers included. A number from Canada, Puerto Rico or another US territory, a Caribbean country on the +1 code, or anywhere else is counted on its own line before you pay, never looked up and never charged. Every one of them comes back to you in a separate file, with your columns as you uploaded them, so you know exactly which numbers were not screened.
Is a +1 number always American?
No. +1 is the country code of the North American Numbering Plan, which NANPA describes as serving 20 countries: the United States and its territories, Canada, Bermuda and a group of Caribbean nations including Jamaica, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic. A number can start with +1 and a familiar-looking three-digit area code and still be outside the US. E.164 explains how the country code fits into the full number.
Why did my refund for unanswered numbers come to $0?
Because the list was on the $5 minimum either way. The refund is the difference between what you paid and what the answered numbers would have cost on their own. A 20-number list costs $5, and so does a 19-number list, so losing one number on it changes nothing. The completion email says so in that case, rather than leaving the refund line blank.
Can I see which numbers were left out?
Partly. The file you download holds only the rows that passed, so any row of yours that is missing from it was either removed or could not be checked, and your results give the count for each reason. Numbers outside the US come back in a file of their own, every row with your columns, which you can download from your dashboard or the completion email. Litigator matches are counted, never listed.
What happens if lookups fail across the whole list?
That is an outage, not a property of your numbers, and the scrub stops rather than deliver a half-checked file. Nothing is delivered and your payment still covers the job. The failure email says whether to retry it yourself or whether we will restart it once the problem is fixed, and how to ask for a refund instead.