From Cairo relatives to Nile-cruise front desks and Gulf-based Egyptian workers back home, this is how you actually reach a phone in Egypt.
Rates updated September 15, 2026
To reach a Egypt number from the United States, dial these three parts in order.
011 20 10 01234567
From any mobile, anywhere in the world, you can dial +20 10 01234567 instead. Press and hold 0 to type the +, and the phone picks the right access code for wherever you are.
Numbers in Egypt are written locally with a 0 in front, like 010 01234567. Calling from abroad you leave that 0 out, so it becomes +20 10 01234567.
A typical Egypt mobile number is 10 digits after +20. If a call does not connect, count the digits first.
Only the first part changes. Your access code replaces the 011, then 20 and the number stay exactly the same.
A ~ means wait for the second dial tone before dialing the rest. It is not a digit you press.
Calls to Egypt are $0.29 a minute, billed by the minute. There is no connection fee, no monthly plan, and no minimum spend. You add prepaid credit from $5, and it never expires.
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Egypt receives one of the Arab world's heaviest inbound call volumes, and it splits into two very different streams. The first is labor-migration remittance traffic: millions of Egyptians work in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, and Jordan, and the Gulf is Egypt's single largest source of inbound calls, sons and husbands calling 010 and 012 mobiles in villages across the Delta and Upper Egypt. The second stream is the Western diaspora, concentrated in the United States (large Egyptian and Coptic communities in Jersey City and Bayonne, New Jersey, plus Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and the Washington DC suburbs), Canada (Greater Toronto and Montreal), Italy, France, and the UK. Coptic Orthodox and Muslim family networks keep this line busy around Ramadan, Eid, Coptic Christmas (7 January), and family emergencies.
Calling out of Egypt starts with the international access code 00 (so a US number is dialed 00 then 1 then the 10 digits) - Wikipedia. The dominant outbound destinations mirror the inbound corridors in reverse: Saudi Arabia and the UAE (relatives working abroad, and Egyptians arranging Hajj and Umrah), then the US, Italy, and Kuwait. A practical quirk shapes behavior on the ground: Egypt has historically taxed and restricted international voice, so many callers inside Egypt lean on WhatsApp and Messenger for outbound international calls rather than dialing 00 on a mobile plan, which is exactly why an inbound service that rings the recipient's normal phone is valued (the person in Egypt needs no app and no data).
Dial your international exit code: 011 from the US and Canada, or + from any mobile.
Dial Egypt's country code, 20.
Drop the national trunk 0 from the number. An Egyptian mobile written 0101 234 5678 becomes 101 234 5678; a Cairo landline written 02 2345 6789 becomes 2 2345 6789.
For a mobile, dial the two-digit operator prefix (10, 11, 12, or 15) plus the 8-digit subscriber number. For a landline, dial the 1- or 2-digit area code plus the subscriber number.
Full example, calling a mobile from the US: 011 20 10 1234 5678.
The single most common mistake is keeping the leading 0: from abroad you dial +20 10..., never +20 010..., because that trunk 0 is only for domestic dialing - Wikipedia. Watch total length: an Egyptian mobile is 11 digits nationally (0 + 10 digits), so from abroad you dial 10 digits after +20 - Wikipedia. Landlines vary: Cairo (02) numbers can be longer than governorate landlines, so count the digits the recipient gives you rather than assuming a fixed length. Avoid (, ): they are domestic-only and will not connect from outside Egypt - .
Number portability broke the old prefix-equals-carrier shortcut. Egypt launched full mobile number portability on 9 June 2020, and the NTRA now requires operators to complete a switch within a maximum of 24 hours - Telecompaper. Practically, this means an 010 number is no longer guaranteed to be on Vodafone, nor an 015 on WE. If your calling app tries to route or label by prefix, it can be wrong, and Egyptians frequently port to chase promotions, so the ported base is meaningful.
Reaching a real person at an Egyptian business often means dialing a 5-digit short code, not a full number. Banks, telecoms, airlines, and government services publish 19XXX hotlines (for example bank and service call centers) and 16XXX service numbers rather than a landline you can reach from abroad - ITU numbering plan. These short codes usually do not work from outside Egypt, so an overseas caller trying to reach a Cairo bank hotline hits a dead end and needs the bank's full international landline instead.
Egypt has a real, regulator-acknowledged spam-call problem, and the fix changes how unknown numbers behave. The NTRA rolled out rules forcing telemarketers to register and enabling caller-identity measures, with a threatened permanent cross-network ban for repeat spammers, and it runs a spam-and-fraud reporting service - . For an inbound international caller this matters two ways: Egyptian recipients are primed to ignore unfamiliar numbers, and a call that presents a clean, consistent caller ID is far more likely to be answered.
Egypt runs a closed numbering plan under country code 20, with a national trunk prefix 0 you drop when dialing from abroad - Wikipedia. A mobile is unmistakable: written nationally it is 11 digits beginning 010, 011, 012, or 015, which is a two-digit operator prefix (10 Vodafone, 11 Etisalat/e&, 12 Orange, 15 WE) plus an 8-digit subscriber number - Wikipedia. In international form the leading 0 disappears, so a mobile becomes +20 10 XXXX XXXX.
Landlines are built differently. After the trunk 0 comes a geographic area code that is one digit for the biggest metros (2 for Cairo, Giza, and Qalyubia; 3 for Alexandria) or two digits for the governorates (ranging up to 97 for Aswan) - Wikipedia. The subscriber tail is typically 7 digits, so a full Cairo landline runs to about 10 digits nationally (02 plus 8 digits in the largest exchanges) while most governorate landlines are 9 digits. The reliable tell: if what follows the two-digit 01X is 8 digits, it is a mobile; if a number opens with and carries a shorter tail, it is a fixed line.
Egypt's geography is legible in its area codes, which is useful when you see an unknown landline. The Cairo capital region (Cairo, Giza, Qalyubia) all share code 2, so 02 covers the whole megacity of over twenty million - Sent. Alexandria on the Mediterranean is 3. Down the Nile, Luxor is 95 and Aswan is 97, the two codes you will see most on cruise operators, temple-tour offices, and Nile hotels - Sent.
The Canal cities each have their own code: Port Said 66, Suez 62, Ismailia 64 - Sent. The Red Sea and Sinai resort belt, where a lot of inbound calls to hotels and dive centers land, uses Hurghada 65 and Sharm El Sheikh 69 - Sent. In the Delta, Mansoura is 50 and Tanta is 40; in Upper Egypt, Assiut is 88 and Minya is 86 - Sent. Because mobiles carry no geography (an 010 number could be a Cairo lawyer or an Aswan farmer), an area code is often your only clue to where a fixed-line business actually sits.
For tourism and hospitality (Nile cruises, Red Sea resorts, Luxor and Aswan tour operators), you will usually be handed a mobile rather than a landline, because reservations staff run their bookings off WhatsApp-linked 010/012 numbers. Those ring reliably from abroad when you dial the full +20 mobile. Hotel switchboards in Cairo (02), Sharm (069), or Hurghada (065) are the fixed-line exception.
Government and banks are the hard cases. Most publish 5-digit short codes (19XXX bank and service hotlines, 16XXX utility and service numbers) that are engineered for domestic callers and typically fail from overseas - ITU. To reach a Cairo bank from the US you generally need its full geographic +20 2 landline, not the 1930-style hotline on its website. Emergency numbers (122 police, 123 ambulance, 180 fire, and 112 from mobiles) are domestic-only and not something you dial internationally - Wikipedia.
With elders, the mobile is almost always the answer, and timing matters more than the number. Many older Egyptians keep an 010 Vodafone number they have had for years and will not recognize a foreign caller ID, so it helps to text first (many now use WhatsApp) or call at a predictable family hour. Ramadan reshuffles the whole day: during the fasting month people are awake and social late into the night after , so an evening Egypt-time call lands better than an afternoon one.
Egypt has four mobile operators: Vodafone Egypt (010), Etisalat / e& (011), Orange, formerly Mobinil (012), and WE, run by state-owned Telecom Egypt (015) - Wikipedia. WE is the newcomer: Telecom Egypt received its mobile license from the NTRA in 2016 and launched WE on the 015 prefix in September 2017, making it the first fully integrated fixed-plus-mobile operator - Ahram Online.
Because portability arrived in 2020 and switching takes at most a day, the operator behind a given number can no longer be inferred from its 010/011/012/015 prefix - Telecompaper. This is genuinely different from countries where prefixes still map cleanly to carriers. For you as the caller it changes nothing about how you dial (the full +20 number is identical), but it means any "this is a Vodafone line" guess based on 010 may simply be wrong, and there is no penalty in reaching a ported number: it rings exactly the same.
It does not: an Egyptian mobile is 11 digits in national format (a leading 0, then 010/011/012/015, then 8 more digits) - Wikipedia. When you call from abroad you drop the leading 0 and dial 10 digits after +20, for example +20 10 1234 5678.
If the number starts 010, 011, 012, or 015 it is a mobile - Wikipedia. If it starts with a 0 followed by a 1- or 2-digit area code (Cairo 02, Alexandria 03, Luxor 095, Aswan 097) and a shorter tail, it is a landline. For most Egyptian families the mobile is the line that actually gets answered.
Not reliably anymore. Egypt launched mobile number portability in June 2020 with switching in up to 24 hours, so people keep their number when they change networks - Telecompaper. An 010 number is no longer guaranteed to be Vodafone. It does not affect how you dial: the full number rings the same.
Egyptian banks, telecoms, and utilities publish 5-digit short codes (19XXX and 16XXX) that are built for domestic callers and generally do not work internationally - ITU. To reach them from abroad you need the institution's full geographic +20 2 (Cairo) landline instead of the hotline.
Egypt is UTC+2 (EET), roughly 6 to 7 hours ahead of US Eastern. Calling 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. ET reaches people in the evening in Egypt when families are home. Remember the workweek is Sunday to Thursday and Friday is the weekend, so reach offices midweek. During Ramadan, late-evening calls after iftar land best.
No. This service places a real phone call to any Egyptian mobile or landline, so the person you are calling just answers their normal phone. They need no app, no SIM change, and no data. You dial from your browser after adding prepaid credit, billed per minute at one flat Egypt rate shown before you connect.
Add a little credit and dial any Egypt number right from your browser.
Start callingLandline reachability is uneven and fading. Fixed lines are still run by state-owned Telecom Egypt, but household landline penetration is low and shrinking, so for most families the mobile is the only line that will actually be picked up - Wikipedia. Older relatives in Cairo, Alexandria, or Upper Egyptian towns may still keep an 02 or 095 landline, but expect the mobile to be the reliable path.
A common formatting trap: because Egyptian mobiles are so long, people write them many ways (0100 123 4567, +201001234567, 20 100 1234567). They are all the same number. The only transformation that matters when you dial from abroad is dropping that single leading 0 and prepending +20.