Whether you are reaching family in the banlieues of Paris, a landlord in Nice, or a supplier in Lyon, calling France from your browser puts you a few taps away.
Rates updated September 15, 2026
To reach a France number from the United States, dial these three parts in order.
011 33 6 12 34 56 78
From any mobile, anywhere in the world, you can dial +33 6 12 34 56 78 instead. Press and hold 0 to type the +, and the phone picks the right access code for wherever you are.
Numbers in France are written locally with a 0 in front, like 06 12 34 56 78. Calling from abroad you leave that 0 out, so it becomes +33 6 12 34 56 78.
A typical France mobile number is 9 digits after +33. If a call does not connect, count the digits first.
Only the first part changes. Your access code replaces the 011, then 33 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 France are $0.22 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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France receives one of Europe's densest inbound calling flows because of its immigration geography. Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia are the three largest countries of birth for immigrants in France, with Algerians the single largest foreign nationality and roughly 892,000 Algerian-born residents recorded in the 2023 census - The Local / INSEE. That drives enormous Maghreb-to-France traffic: relatives in Algiers, Oran, Casablanca, Rabat and Tunis calling into Marseille, Lyon, and the Paris banlieues where those communities concentrate. Portugal (around 7.3% of immigrants) plus Italy, Turkey and Spain add steady European inbound flows to the same cities - Immigration to France, Wikipedia.
From the United States, the callers are overwhelmingly the French American diaspora (around 9.4 million people of French ancestry) plus business and tourism. Louisiana is a distinct source: over 10% of the state claims French roots and Cajun communities of over 500,000 keep genuine ties to France - French Americans, Wikipedia. Quebec, the largest Francophone population outside France, generates heavy Canada-to-France traffic into Paris and Lille. Add the practical reasons: American second-home owners in Provence, the Dordogne and the Cote d'Azur calling agents, notaires and gardiens, and tourists arranging apartments in Paris and Nice.
Dial your international access: + from a mobile, or 011 from a US or Canadian landline.
Enter France's country code 33.
Drop the leading trunk 0 from the French number (a Paris 01... becomes just 1...).
Dial the remaining 9 digits, which is the 10-digit French number minus that leading 0.
For a mobile, the same rule applies: 06 12 34 56 78 is dialed as +33 6 12 34 56 78.
The single rule that trips people up: drop the leading 0 when calling from abroad. A French number written 01 42 68 53 00 is dialed +33 1 42 68 53 00, never +33 0 1..., because the 0 is a domestic trunk prefix that +33 replaces - Telephone numbers in France, Wikipedia. Every valid metropolitan number is exactly 10 digits domestically (9 after the dropped 0), so if you count 8 you are missing a digit and if you count 11 you have kept the 0 by mistake. Ranges to avoid dialing from abroad: 08 special/premium numbers and 118 directory services are often not routable internationally, and short codes like 15, 17, 18, 112 are French domestic emergency numbers that will not work from the US. With InternationalCall.co you can simply enter the number in +33 form and the trunk 0 is handled for you.
The biggest recent shift is not a digit change but a war on spam calls, and it now actively affects how a French number behaves. As of 1 January 2023, telemarketing calls made with automated systems can no longer display an ordinary 01-05, 06, 07 or 09 number as caller ID; commercial cold-callers in mainland France are confined to specific ranges: 0162, 0163, 0270, 0271, 0377, 0378, 0424, 0425, 0568, 0569, 0948 and 0949 - Connexion France. The French have learned to distrust and reject those prefixes, which is worth knowing if your own outbound number ever surfaces oddly. Ranges like 0937, 0938, 0939 simply indicate a business messaging platform (delivery, appointments, VTC drivers), not necessarily a scam - Arcep on X.
On top of that, France rolled out the MAN mechanism (Mecanisme d'Authentification des Numeros), mandated by the 2020 Naegelen law (Loi n 2020-901). From 1 October 2024, French operators must cryptographically attest each call's caller ID and block calls that fail authentication, specifically to kill the spoofing of bank and government numbers - Eloquant. The older opt-out registry Bloctel was widely seen as ineffective, which is why network-level blocking replaced trusting it. For a legitimate international caller this is mostly good news, but a poorly-configured VoIP origination can occasionally be dropped, so a clean, properly-presented calling number matters more in France than in most countries.
A French domestic number is always 10 digits, written and spoken in five pairs: for example 01 42 68 53 00. The first digit is always the trunk 0, the second digit is the service class, and the remaining eight identify the subscriber - Telephone numbers in France, Wikipedia. The French almost never say a number digit-by-digit; they read it in pairs ("zero-un, quarante-deux, soixante-huit"), so if someone dictates a number as five two-digit chunks, that is correct and complete.
The leading digits tell you what you are calling. 01 is Ile-de-France (Paris and suburbs), 02 the northwest (Brittany, Normandy, Pays de la Loire, Centre), 03 the northeast (Hauts-de-France, Grand Est, Bourgogne-Franche-Comte), 04 the southeast (PACA, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes, Corsica), and 05 the southwest (Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Occitanie) - Local telephone area codes in France, Wikipedia. 06 and 07 are mobiles, 09 is a non-geographic VoIP/box line (Free, Orange, SFR internet boxes), and 08 is special-rate. In international E.164 form the 0 is dropped and +33 is prepended, so 01 42 68 53 00 becomes +33 1 42 68 53 00.
France's current format is the result of the 18 October 1996 reform, when the country abandoned its old eight-digit system and moved to the present ten-digit closed numbering plan - Telephone numbers in France, Wikipedia. Before that, Paris used one 8-digit scheme and the provinces another, and callers had to dial a 16 prefix to reach the provinces from Paris and 161 to reach Paris from the provinces, a source of endless confusion. The 1996 reform folded the region into the number itself by prefixing 01-05 and gave mobiles the 06 range.
The practical legacy: any old French number you find in a decades-old letter, an inherited address book, or an antique business card with eight digits or a 16 prefix is dead and must be reconstructed with the modern 01-05 area prefix. The mobile 07 range was added later, opened by Arcep from 2010 onward as 06 filled up - Arcep numbering plan. If you have never seen a French mobile starting 07, that is why: it is the newer of the two mobile ranges.
French business hours are genuinely different from American ones, and calling into them blindly wastes attempts. Many offices, and nearly all small shops, close for a lunch break (roughly 12h-14h), so a midday US-morning call often rings out. Government offices (prefectures, mairies, CAF, the tax office) keep restricted public phone hours and frequently route you into a numero vert (0800) or a premium 3xxx short number that will not answer from abroad; the reliable move is the town or agency's plain 01-05 switchboard.
August is its own obstacle: France largely shuts down for les grandes vacances, and small businesses, notaires and even some medical offices close for two to four weeks. If you are calling a French business in August and it rings unanswered, that is normal, not a bad number. For elderly relatives, the landline (01-05) is often still the primary phone and answers reliably at home, whereas a younger relative is only reachable on 06/07. When you are unsure, the mobile reaches the person and the fixed line reaches the household.
The French answer the phone with "Allo?" and then expect a greeting before you launch in; skipping straight to business without a "Bonjour" reads as rude in France in a way it does not in the US. A quick "Bonjour, excusez-moi de vous deranger" (sorry to bother you) opens doors, especially with older people and officials. If you have a little French, using "vous" rather than the familiar "tu" with anyone you do not know is expected.
Timing matters too. Calling a household before 9am or after 9pm (21h) is considered intrusive, and Sunday calls to businesses are pointless because almost everything is closed. The French speak times in the 24-hour clock ("dix-huit heures" for 6pm), so when you agree on a callback time, confirm it in that format to avoid a six-hour miss. And remember your own math: noon in France is 6am in New York, so a "morning" call to France is a pre-dawn call for you.
France's overseas departments share the +33 umbrella conceptually but use their own geographic prefixes, and knowing them prevents misdials. Guadeloupe (with Saint Barthelemy and Saint Martin) uses 05 90, Martinique 05 96, French Guiana 05 94, Reunion 02 62, and Mayotte 02 69 - Local telephone area codes in France, Wikipedia. Mobiles there sit in the 06 90 / 06 96 / 06 39 style ranges depending on the territory.
The consequential difference is time. When it is midday in Paris, it is early morning in the Caribbean departments (Guadeloupe and Martinique are UTC-4, five to six hours behind metropolitan France) and late evening in the Indian Ocean (Reunion UTC+4). From the US East Coast, Guadeloupe and Martinique are actually in your own time band (same or one hour off), which makes them far easier to reach than mainland France. Reunion, at UTC+4, is best caught in your very early morning, which is their afternoon.
That leading 0 is a domestic trunk prefix, used only when dialing inside France. When you call from abroad, +33 takes its place, so 06 12 34 56 78 becomes +33 6 12 34 56 78 - Telephone numbers in France, Wikipedia. Keeping both the +33 and the 0 is the single most common misdial.
Look at the two digits after the trunk 0. 06 and 07 are mobiles; 01 through 05 are geographic landlines by region; 09 is a non-geographic VoIP line - Arcep. All are the same 10-digit length. A mobile reaches the person directly, a landline reaches a home or business location.
Not reliably anymore. Since 1 January 2023, geographic 01-05 numbers are delocalized, so a business can keep its Paris 01 number after moving elsewhere in mainland France - Arcep. The prefix still indicates the number's origin region but no longer guarantees the person's current location.
French numeros verts (0800-0805) and premium 08 service lines are usually free or billable only inside France and frequently unreachable internationally - Connexion France. Find the organization's standard 01-05 switchboard number, which does route from abroad, and call that instead.
Since 2023, French telemarketers must use dedicated ranges like 0162, 0163, 0270, 0377, 0424, 0568, 0948, 0949 and can no longer spoof 06/07 numbers - Connexion France. France also now blocks unauthenticated calls at the network level under the MAN mechanism from October 2024 - Eloquant.
Metropolitan France is 6 hours ahead of US Eastern and 9 ahead of Pacific. Aim for the French afternoon or early evening: roughly 12pm-3pm ET lands at 6pm-9pm in France, when people are home. Avoid the French lunch gap (12h-14h) and calls after 21h local, which are considered intrusive.
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Start callingPeople inside France dial out constantly, and the mirror of the inbound picture holds: the heaviest outbound corridors run to the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia), then to Portugal, Italy, Spain, Turkey and sub-Saharan Africa (Senegal, Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, Cameroon), reflecting France's immigrant communities calling home. Cross-border commuters and business add flows to Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg and the UK.
The quirk to know is the exit code. To dial any international number from inside France you press 00 first, the standard European IDD access code, then the country code - Telephone numbers in France, Wikipedia. So a French person calling the United States dials 00 1, then the 10-digit US number; calling the UK it is 00 44. A French SIM roaming abroad still uses the + sign, but from a fixed line in France the literal 00 is what people type. This matters when someone in France reads you back a number: they may recite it with the 00 already attached out of habit.
The other classic obstacle is 08 and 118 numbers. French numeros verts (freephone, 0800 to 0805) are free from inside France but are frequently unreachable or billable from abroad, and premium 0810-0899 service lines and 118 directory numbers are often simply not routable internationally - Connexion France. So a French bank hotline, SNCF line, or prefecture printed as an 08 number can be a dead end from the US. The workaround is to find the bank's or agency's standard geographic 01-05 switchboard number, which does route internationally, rather than the advertised 08 support line.
Finally, portability confusion: since 2023 landline 01-05 numbers are delocalized, meaning a business can keep its Paris 01 number after moving to Marseille - Arcep. An area code no longer guarantees the person's physical location, and mobiles have been portable between carriers for years, so you cannot infer the operator from the prefix anymore either.