From a daughter in Los Angeles reaching her mother in Guadalajara to a Houston supplier calling a factory in Monterrey, Mexico is the most-called country from the United States, and reaching any mobile or landline there takes one clean 10-digit number.
Rates updated September 15, 2026
To reach a Mexico number from the United States, dial these three parts in order.
011 52 222 123 4567
From any mobile, anywhere in the world, you can dial +52 222 123 4567 instead. Press and hold 0 to type the +, and the phone picks the right access code for wherever you are.
Mexico numbers carry no leading trunk digit, so there is nothing to strip. 222 123 4567 is dialed exactly as written, with +52 in front. Removing a digit here is what makes the call fail.
A typical Mexico mobile number is 10 digits after +52. If a call does not connect, count the digits first.
Only the first part changes. Your access code replaces the 011, then 52 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 Mexico are $0.07 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.
Only for the time you actually talk.
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Mexico is the single most-called international destination from the United States, and the reason is demographic: roughly 37 million people of Mexican origin live in the US, the largest immigrant-origin group in the country. The heaviest calling flows trace the classic migration corridors. California is by far the biggest source, sending more remittances to Mexico than any other US state, with especially dense ties between Jalisco and California and Michoacán and California - Wilson Center. Someone in Los Angeles, San Jose, or Fresno calling a parent in Guadalajara, Zamora, or a small town in Michoacán is the archetypal Mexico call. Texas is the second-largest corridor, with strong links to Nuevo León, San Luis Potosí, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Zacatecas, so a call from Houston, Dallas, or San Antonio into Monterrey or a border town is extremely common - Springer. Illinois (Chicago), Minnesota, Arizona, and Georgia round out the big diaspora hubs.
The historic sending states shape who picks up on the other end: Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Jalisco, and Hidalgo send the most migrants and receive the most calls back - Emigration from Mexico. Beyond family, Mexico is deeply woven into US business: it is the United States' largest trading partner, so , logistics coordinators in , and hotel and tour operators in all field a steady stream of inbound US calls. Canada and Spain add smaller but real corridors, the former driven by snowbirds and seasonal farmworkers, the latter by language and business ties.
Dial your country's exit code. From the US and Canada this is 011; from most of Europe it is 00. On a mobile or a browser dialer you can simply use +.
Dial Mexico's country code, 52.
Dial the full 10-digit national number, which already includes the area code (for example 55 for Mexico City, 33 for Guadalajara, 998 for Cancún). Do NOT add a 1 in front, and do NOT drop any digit.
For a mobile, dial it exactly the same as a landline: since the 2019 reform there is no separate mobile prefix.
Mexico has no trunk-0 to drop. Unlike the UK or Germany, Mexican national numbers carry no leading 0, so there is nothing to strip: you dial +52 and the full 10 digits exactly as written - Telephone numbers in Mexico. The single most common mistake is inserting a 1 after +52 for a mobile. That was mandatory before 2020 and is now wrong, so a number saved as +52 1 55 1234 5678 should be dialed as +52 55 1234 5678 - Telephone numbers in Mexico. If a call fails, first confirm the digit count is exactly 10 after +52, then check for a stray interior 1. Domestic toll-free 800 numbers (format +52 800 xxx xxxx) may not connect internationally at all - Mexperience; use the organization's direct geographic line instead.
The biggest obstacle to reaching a Mexican number is a reform most people abroad still have not absorbed. On August 3, 2019 Mexico's regulator, the Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones (IFT), switched the whole country to a uniform 10-digit dialing plan and abolished the old prefixes 01 (long distance), 02, and 044 / 045 (used to call mobiles from landlines) - Telephone numbers in Mexico. Crucially for anyone calling in, as of 2020 the extra 1 after the country code for mobiles was dropped, so +52 1 55 ... became simply +52 55 ... - Telephone numbers in Mexico. Millions of contacts saved before 2020 still carry that stray 1, and it is the number-one reason a call to a Mexican cell fails today.
WhatsApp is where the old prefix lives on and causes real confusion. Because Mexico is a WhatsApp-first country (it is how most families actually stay in touch), many older contacts are still stored as +52 1, and WhatsApp historically kept accepting that legacy format even after phone networks dropped it - WhatsApp Help Center. The result is a split reality: the same person may need for a normal phone call but appear under in your chat list. If you are placing an actual voice call, always use the clean and delete any interior 1.
Every Mexican number is 10 digits behind the country code +52, and it splits into an area code plus a local number - Telephone numbers in Mexico. The three biggest cities use 2-digit area codes followed by an 8-digit local number: Mexico City is 55 (with 56 as an overlay), Guadalajara is 33, and Monterrey is 81 - Telephone numbers in Mexico. Everywhere else uses a 3-digit area code with a 7-digit local number.
Those 3-digit codes are worth recognizing because they tell you where a person is. Tijuana is 664, Cancún is 998, Puebla is 222, Mérida is 999, Ciudad Juárez is 656, Querétaro is 442, León is 477, and Acapulco is 744 - Telephone numbers in Mexico. The first digit of the area code loosely maps to one of the country's principal regions, which is why northern border cities cluster in the 6xx and 8xx ranges and the Yucatán and southeast sit in the 9xx range.
Written formatting varies: you will see 55 1234 5678 (2+4+4) in the capital and 998 123 4567 (3+3+4) in Cancún, but the grouping is cosmetic. What matters is that after there are exactly , no leading 0, and no extra 1. Toll-free service numbers use the prefix in the same 10-digit shape, for example , though these are meant for callers inside Mexico and frequently will not complete from abroad.
Mexico spans four time zones, but the vast majority of the population you are likely to call sits in Zona Centro (UTC-6), the same as US Central Time, covering Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla, and León - Time in Mexico. The northwest runs on Zona Pacífico (UTC-7) and Baja California on Zona Noroeste (UTC-8). The important outlier is Cancún and the rest of Quintana Roo, which sit on UTC-5 year-round, an hour ahead of the capital, because the state broke away to its own zone in 2015 to match the US East Coast tourism market - Time in Mexico.
The single most useful fact for timing a call: Mexico abolished daylight saving time on October 30, 2022, so most of the country no longer springs forward or falls back - timeanddate. This means the offset from the US is no longer stable across the year: for part of the year Mexico City and Chicago share a clock, and for part of the year Mexico City is an hour behind. The exceptions that still change clocks are Baja California (which keeps DST to stay aligned with California) and the northern border municipalities in Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas that follow the US schedule - timeanddate. Sonora has skipped DST since 1998 to stay locked with Arizona.
In practice, from the US West Coast Mexico City is one hour ahead, so a mid-morning California call lands late morning there, and an early evening call (6 to 9pm PT) comfortably reaches someone at home in the 8 to 11pm range. From the , most of Mexico is one hour behind, so afternoons are easy. Family calls in Mexico skew toward evenings and Sunday, when the whole household is together.
Mexican businesses lean heavily on WhatsApp as a primary contact channel, so a small shop, a doctor's office, or a tour operator may list a mobile number that is really a WhatsApp line first and a voice line second. For voice, larger companies publish 800 toll-free numbers, but remember these are built for domestic callers and may not accept an international connection, so look for the company's direct geographic number (with a 55, 33, 81, or local area code) when calling from abroad.
Banks and government agencies are a specific challenge because of the REUS and REPEP rules and heavy anti-fraud posture: Mexican banks like BBVA, Santander, and Citibanamex train customers to distrust unsolicited calls, since impersonating a bank is a common scam - abogadomex. If you are trying to reach a Mexican institution, use the number printed on the back of the card or the official website, and expect long automated menus in Spanish. The national emergency number is 911, adopted across Mexico in 2016, replacing the older 060 and 066 numbers.
For reaching elders and family in smaller towns, patience helps: rural coverage in states like Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Chiapas can be thinner, and a landline in a village may be the household's shared phone. A short WhatsApp message announcing you will call at a set time is the local etiquette that gets a reliable pickup.
One company dominates: Telcel, owned by América Móvil, carries the large majority of Mexico's mobile subscribers and revenue, well ahead of the rest of the market - Statista. AT&T Mexico is a clear second and Movistar third, with fast-growing budget MVNOs like Bait (sold in Walmart stores) adding low-cost prepaid lines - Statista. Because Telcel's coverage reaches deep into rural areas, most of the family numbers you call in the sending states will be Telcel lines.
Since the 2019 reform stripped out routing prefixes, number portability is invisible to you as a caller: a person can move from Telcel to Movistar and keep the exact same 10-digit number, so the area code no longer reliably tells you the carrier or even, in border regions, the precise city. For a browser-to-phone service this changes nothing about how you dial, but it does mean you should trust the full number you were given rather than assumptions based on the prefix.
A regulatory development worth knowing: Mexico attempted a mandatory biometric mobile-line registry (PANAUT) but the Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional in April 2022 on privacy grounds - Library of Congress. More recent biometric-CURP identity proposals have faced court injunctions and remain contested, so lines are not currently blocked on that basis, but the topic keeps resurfacing in Mexican telecom news.
No. That was required before 2020, but the 1 was officially dropped and a mobile is now dialed identically to a landline: +52 followed by the 10-digit number - Telephone numbers in Mexico. If you have an old contact saved as +52 1 ..., delete the interior 1 before calling.
WhatsApp kept accepting the legacy +521 mobile format even after Mexican networks retired the extra 1 in 2020, so older chats still carry it - WhatsApp Help Center. For an actual voice call, always strip that 1 and dial the clean +52 + 10 digits.
Every number is exactly 10 digits after +52, and the area code is baked into those 10 digits - Telephone numbers in Mexico. Big cities use 2-digit codes (Mexico City 55, Guadalajara 33, Monterrey 81) and everywhere else uses 3-digit codes (Cancún 998, Tijuana 664, Puebla 222).
Not from the number itself. The 2019 reform removed the routing prefixes that used to distinguish them, so mobiles and landlines are now flat 10-digit numbers dialed the same way - Telephone numbers in Mexico. With a browser-to-phone call it makes no difference: you dial both the same.
Most of Mexico, including Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey, is on UTC-6 (US Central Time), but Mexico abolished daylight saving time in October 2022, so the offset shifts when the US changes clocks and Mexico does not - timeanddate. Cancún runs an hour ahead on UTC-5 year-round.
Mexican 800 numbers are designed for domestic callers and frequently will not complete on an international connection - Mexperience. Look for the company's direct geographic number (with a 55, 33, 81, or local area code) and dial that instead.
Add a little credit and dial any Mexico number right from your browser.
Start callingPeople inside Mexico call outward most of all to the United States, mirroring the same family ties in reverse: a mother in Oaxaca returning her son's missed call in North Carolina, or a business in Mexico City reaching a client in Texas. The practical quirk to know is that the international access code differs by line type. From a Mexican landline you dial 00 first, then the country code and number, so the US becomes 00 1 followed by the 10 digits - Mexperience. From a Mexican mobile you dial + instead (press and hold the 0 key to produce it), never 00. After the US, common destinations dialed out of Mexico include Guatemala, Spain, Colombia, and Canada, reflecting Central American migration through Mexico, family in Spain, and cross-border commerce. One thing locals learn fast: US and Canadian toll-free numbers (800, 888, 866) often will not connect from a Mexican mobile, so people fall back on a web-based call to reach a US bank or airline hotline - Mexperience.
Another challenge is that you can no longer tell a mobile from a landline by looking at it. Before 2019 the routing prefix told you; now both are flat 10-digit numbers dialed the same way, so you cannot know in advance whether you are reaching a cell or a home phone - Telephone numbers in Mexico. For a browser-to-phone service this is a non-issue because you dial both identically, but it matters if you are trying to guess reachability.
Spam, extortion, and unwanted sales calls are a heavy part of the Mexican phone experience. Mexico runs two separate do-not-call registries: REPEP, administered by consumer agency Profeco, blocks telemarketing from carriers and retailers, while REUS, run by financial regulator Condusef, blocks banks, insurers, and Afores from cold-calling - TALK-Q. More seriously, prepaid lines have long been used for extortion and virtual-kidnapping scams (a caller claiming to hold a relative and demanding payment), which makes many Mexicans wary of unknown numbers and slow to answer a call they do not recognize - FCC. If your call is not picked up on the first try, a follow-up text on WhatsApp saying who is calling dramatically improves the odds.