Call family in Lima, a supplier in Arequipa, or a guesthouse in Cusco, straight from your browser, no app and nothing for them to install.
Rates updated September 15, 2026
To reach a Peru number from the United States, dial these three parts in order.
011 51 912 345 678
From any mobile, anywhere in the world, you can dial +51 912 345 678 instead. Press and hold 0 to type the +, and the phone picks the right access code for wherever you are.
It depends on the number. Landlines in Peru are usually written with a 0 in front, while mobiles like 912 345 678 carry none. Remove a leading 0 only if the number you were given actually has one, and never add one that is not there.
A typical Peru mobile number is 9 digits after +51. If a call does not connect, count the digits first.
Only the first part changes. Your access code replaces the 011, then 51 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 Peru are $0.10 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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The heaviest flow into Peru is from the United States, home to roughly 30.2% of Peruvians living abroad and the source of about 47.2% of all remittances the country receives (INEI, IMF). Much of that traffic funnels through a few dense hubs. Paterson, New Jersey, nicknamed Little Lima for the Peruvian-owned restaurants, bakeries and travel agencies along Market Street, is the largest Peruvian enclave outside South America and hosts a Peruvian consulate (Wikipedia). New Jersey alone counts tens of thousands of Peruvians across Passaic, Essex and Hudson counties, and Miami-Dade, Washington DC and Los Angeles carry large communities too (Peruvian Americans). A weeknight call from Paterson or Doral to a 9XX mobile in Lima or an 084 guesthouse in Cusco is the archetypal inbound call.
Beyond the US, expect steady inbound calls from Spain (about 15.6% of the diaspora, embedded in a large Latin American community there), Argentina (13.5%), Chile (11.7%) and (10.2%), plus a distinctive corridor from (3.7%) rooted in the Nikkei community (). Chile and Spain each account for roughly of remittances sent home (). The calls are family birthdays, sending-money check-ins, and small-business coordination with relatives running a shop or a chacra back in the provinces.
Start with your international access code (from the US and Canada that is 011; from most other countries it is 00), then Peru's country code 51.
Choose the line type: for a mobile, dial 9 followed by the 8 remaining digits (9XX XXX XXX). For a landline, dial the area code without any leading 0 (1 for Lima/Callao, or a 2-digit code like 54, 84, 44), then the 7-digit number.
Never add a leading 0 before the area code when calling from abroad. The trunk 0 (as in (01) or (084)) is domestic-only and must be dropped.
Do not attach an area code to a mobile number: mobiles are non-geographic, so a 9XX number stands alone.
With InternationalCall.co you just type the full +51 number in the browser dialer and press call, the trunk-0 handling is built in.
Total significant digits after +51 are 9 for a mobile (starts with 9) and 8 or 9 for a landline (Lima/Callao is code 1 plus 7 digits, other regions are a 2-digit code plus 7 digits) (Wikipedia). The classic error is keeping the domestic trunk 0 (writing +51 01... or +51 084...), which breaks the call; drop it. The second classic error is bolting an area code onto a 9XX mobile, which has been non-geographic since the reform (). Peru's toll-free numbers generally cannot be reached from outside the country.
The single most confusing thing about Peruvian numbers is the mobile-versus-landline split that erased geography from cell phones. Since September 4, 2010, Peru created a national 脕rea Virtual M贸vil (Mobile Virtual Area), making every mobile non-geographical and a uniform 9 digits starting with 9 (Wikipedia). That reform was the tail end of an earlier change: back in 2008 a 9 was prefixed to the old eight-digit cell numbers to lengthen them, while landlines were left untouched (Grokipedia). The practical trap for a caller abroad is that a Peruvian mobile carries no area code at all, so pairing a 9XX number with a city code (a very common mistake) produces an unreachable string.
Number portability adds a second layer of confusion. Mobile numbers have been portable since 2010 and fixed lines since 2014, and OSIPTEL (the telecom regulator) cut porting time to about 24 hours (OSIPTEL). Because the number no longer tells you the carrier, a 9XX number that once meant Movistar might now ride on Claro, Entel or Bitel. After a wave of SIM-swap and identity fraud, OSIPTEL tightened the rules with a validated by the centralized portability database (the ABDCP), replacing the old sworn-declaration method, and required a before a cancelled-then-ported number can be reassigned ().
Peru's country code is 51, and the whole number after it runs to a predictable length. A mobile is 9 digits and always opens with 9, grouped as 9XX XXX XXX, with no area code anywhere in it (Wikipedia). A landline carries a geographic code first. For Lima and Callao that code is the single digit 1 followed by a 7-digit subscriber number (8 significant digits in total), and everywhere else it is a 2-digit area code plus a 7-digit number (9 significant digits) (Wikipedia).
So the two shapes you will meet are a Lima landline like +51 1 234 5678 and any mobile like +51 9XX XXX XXX. A quick sanity check: if the part after +51 starts with 9 it is a mobile; if it starts with a 1 (Lima) or a 2-digit code such as 54, 84 or 44, it is a landline in a specific city. When Peruvians write numbers domestically they often include the trunk 0 (for example (01) 234-5678 in Lima or (084) 23-XXXX in Cusco), which you drop entirely when dialing from abroad.
Outside Lima, the 2-digit area code is a geographic fingerprint. The most-dialed provincial codes map to Peru's second cities: 54 is Arequipa in the south, 84 is Cusco (the gateway for Machu Picchu bookings), 44 is Trujillo in La Libertad on the north coast, 74 is Chiclayo in Lambayeque, and 73 is Piura near the Ecuador border (Wikipedia). Deeper into the country, 65 reaches Iquitos in the Amazon region of Loreto (a city with no road connection, only river and air), 51 covers Puno on Lake Titicaca, 56 is Ica (Nazca, Paracas), 52 is Tacna at the Chilean frontier, and 82 is Puerto Maldonado in Madre de Dios (Wikipedia).
A small point of pride and precision: Lima and Callao share the single-digit code 1, the only one-digit area code in the plan, reflecting how much of the country's fixed-line base sits in the capital metropolitan area (Wikipedia). If someone gives you a landline and names their city, the code should match the list above, and a mismatch usually means they actually handed you a mobile.
Peruvian institutions lean heavily on 0800 toll-free numbers and dedicated service lines for customer support, and these free-phone ranges typically do not work from outside Peru, a universal quirk of toll-free numbering. If a Peruvian bank, utility or ministry only publishes an 0800 hotline, you often cannot reach it from abroad; look for the institution's direct Lima (1) landline or a 9XX mobile line instead. Many businesses now route customers to WhatsApp Business or a 9XX number precisely because it is reachable internationally.
Government and emergency numbers are short codes you would only use inside Peru: 105 for police, 106 for ambulance, 116 for fire, 103 for directory information, and 911 as a general emergency line (Wikipedia). These are not dialable from overseas and are not the way to reach a person. For consular or official matters, Peruvians abroad usually deal with the local consulate (as in Paterson) rather than dialing a hotline back home (Wikipedia).
Because Peru holds UTC-5 all year with no daylight saving (Time in Peru), the offset you plan around depends on the season, not on Peru. From the US East Coast the two clocks are identical in winter and Peru is one hour behind once the US springs forward. From the West Coast, Peru runs two or three hours ahead of Pacific depending on the season, so a late-morning California call comfortably lands in a Peruvian afternoon.
On manners: Peruvians are warm on the phone and a call typically opens with a greeting and a quick '驴c贸mo est谩s?' before business, so budget a minute for pleasantries rather than diving straight in. Given the spam-call fatigue described above, the reliable pattern is to text or WhatsApp first ('te llamo en un ratito por internet') so your unfamiliar caller ID is expected. For provincial contacts in Cusco, Iquitos or Puno, remember the local economy runs on tourism and small trade, so business hours can start early and pause around midday; late morning or early evening are the safest windows to catch a person.
Four operators dominate the mobile market, Movistar (Telef贸nica), Claro (Am茅rica M贸vil), Entel and Bitel (Viettel), and thanks to full portability the 9XX prefix no longer reveals which one a number belongs to (Wikipedia). That is a feature for the person answering and a non-issue for you calling in, since you dial the same +51 9XX XXX XXX regardless of carrier.
Geography still shapes reachability more than the numbering plan does. Coverage is dense across coastal cities from Lima to Trujillo to Arequipa, but in the Amazon (Loreto, Ucayali) and the high Andes, signal thins out and a mobile may be off-network for long stretches, so a call that will not connect is often about where the phone physically is, not about the number. Landlines in remote provinces are comparatively stable, which is one reason a family's fixed 65 (Iquitos) or 84 (Cusco) number can be a more dependable way to reach elders than their mobile.
Look at the first digit after +51. If it is 9, it is a mobile (always 9 digits, 9XX XXX XXX, with no area code). If it starts with 1 it is a Lima/Callao landline, and if it starts with a 2-digit code like 54, 84 or 44 it is a landline in that specific city (Wikipedia).
Because Peruvian mobiles are non-geographic. Since the 脕rea Virtual M贸vil launched on September 4, 2010, every mobile is a standalone 9-digit number starting with 9 and is not tied to any city (Wikipedia). Do not try to add a Lima or Cusco code to it.
No. That 0 is the domestic trunk prefix and is only used inside Peru. When calling from abroad you drop it and dial +51 then the bare area code and number, so (01) 234-5678 becomes +51 1 234 5678 (Wikipedia).
Two common causes. First, spam-call fatigue is real in Peru, so people often ignore unknown international caller IDs; a quick WhatsApp saying you are about to call helps a lot (Indecopi). Second, in the Amazon or high Andes the mobile may simply be out of coverage, in which case a landline (like an Iquitos 65 or Cusco 84 line) can be more reliable.
The big change was the 2008 to 2010 mobile reform: a 9 was prefixed to older eight-digit cell numbers in 2008, and by September 4, 2010 all mobiles became a uniform, non-geographic 9 digits (Grokipedia). Landlines were left unchanged. More recently, OSIPTEL tightened number-portability security with a mandatory PIN to curb SIM fraud (OSIPTEL).
Usually not. Peru's 0800 toll-free numbers are meant for domestic callers and typically do not connect from abroad. Look instead for the institution's direct Lima landline (area code 1) or a 9XX mobile or WhatsApp line, which are reachable internationally.
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Start callingFrom inside Peru the international access code is 00, so a Peruvian dials 00 + country code + number to reach the world (Wikipedia). A twist worth knowing: to route a long-distance or international call you may see a carrier selection prefix in the 19XX family (for example carriers such as Movistar, Claro, Entel and Bitel, or resellers like Americatel and IDT), letting the caller pick which operator carries the call (Wikipedia). Most people just use the default 00 their line already routes.
The outbound destinations mirror the diaspora in reverse: relatives in the United States (dial 00 1), Spain (00 34), Argentina (00 54), Chile (00 56), Italy (00 39) and Japan (00 81) top the list. A Lima parent calling a son studying in Madrid, or a Cusco tour operator confirming a booking with a US agency, is the everyday outbound call, and because Peru holds UTC-5 all year, the caller has to do the mental math for whichever destination is on daylight saving, since Peru never shifts.
Unwanted marketing calls (llamadas spam) are a genuine daily nuisance in Peru, so people frequently ignore calls from numbers they do not recognize, especially unknown international ones. Telemarketing is constrained by consent rules under Peru's Personal Data Protection Law (Ley N掳 29733) and enforced by Indecopi, but enforcement lags the volume (Indecopi). The upshot for anyone calling in: a first attempt may go unanswered, and a follow-up WhatsApp or text saying who is calling dramatically raises your chances, since WhatsApp is the default channel for most Peruvians.