From Fall River to France, families and friends call Portugal to reach parents in the Minho, cousins in the Azores, and businesses from Lisbon to the Algarve.
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Rates updated October 31, 2026
To reach a Portugal number from the United States, dial these three parts in order.
011 351 912 345 678
From any mobile, anywhere in the world, you can dial +351 912 345 678 instead. Press and hold 0 to type the +, and the phone picks the right access code for wherever you are.
Numbers in Portugal carry no leading trunk digit, so there is nothing to strip. 912 345 678 is dialed exactly as written, with +351 in front. Removing a digit here is what makes the call fail.
A Portugal mobile number is 9 digits after +351. If a call does not connect, count the digits first.
Only the first part changes. Your access code replaces the 011, then 351 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.
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The heaviest calls into Portugal come from its enormous European diaspora. France hosts by far the largest Portuguese community, with hundreds of thousands of Portuguese-born residents and French citizens of Portuguese descent, and it is the single biggest source of remittances sent home (Migration Policy Institute). Luxembourg is proportionally the most Portuguese country in the world outside Portugal, where people of Portuguese origin make up roughly 16 percent of the population, followed by dense communities in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Spain (Portugal.com). A construction worker in Zurich or Geneva calling a mother in Braga on a Sunday afternoon is the archetypal inbound call.
From the United States, the corridor is overwhelmingly Azorean. Most Portuguese Americans trace their roots to the Azores, seeded by 19th-century whalers who recruited crew in the islands and settled in New England (New England Historical Society). Fall River, Massachusetts has the densest Portuguese-American concentration in the country at around 46 percent, with New Bedford, Somerset, and Dartmouth close behind, and Rhode Island holds the highest per-capita share of any US state (Portuguese Americans, Wikipedia). Newark, New Jersey, home to the Ironbound's Portuguese quarter and a Portuguese consulate, and San Jose, California are the other major hubs. These families call Ponta Delgada (296), Angra do Heroísmo, and Funchal (291) far more than they call Lisbon.
People inside Portugal dial out using the international access code 00, then the country code and number (ANACOM National Numbering Plan). So a call to a US number from Lisbon is 00 1 followed by the ten-digit number, and a call back to family in France is 00 33. The 00 prefix is universal across Portuguese networks, and mobile users often just hold the 0 key to produce the + for E.164 dialing instead.
Outbound volume tilts toward the lusophone world and the reverse of the inbound corridors. Calls to Brazil (55) are constant given deep cultural and family ties, and calls to the PALOP countries (Angola 244, Cape Verde 238, Mozambique 258, Guinea-Bissau 245) reflect large communities from former colonies now living in Lisbon and Setúbal. Then come the mirror-image family calls back to relatives who emigrated: France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the UK, and increasingly the United States and Canada, plus a growing stream of calls from foreign residents (British, French, German, and American retirees and remote workers in the Algarve and Lisbon) ringing their home countries.
From the US, dial the exit code 011, then Portugal's country code 351.
Dial the full 9-digit national number exactly as written. There is no trunk 0 to remove.
For a Lisbon landline that is 21 + seven digits (for example 21 123 4567); for a mobile it is a 9-digit number starting with 91, 92, 93, or 96.
On a mobile you can instead press + (hold 0), then 351, then the 9 digits.
Portugal has no trunk prefix: the leading 0 was abolished in the 1999 closed-numbering reform, so you never add or drop a zero (Telephone numbers in Portugal, Wikipedia). Every number is exactly 9 digits. If a number is written with (0) before the area code, ignore that zero: it is a pre-1999 relic. Watch for 808/707 shared-cost and 800 freephone numbers, which often will not connect from outside Portugal, and prefer a geographic 21 or 22 line when calling institutions. The country code 351 is immutable and is included in the example above.
The biggest structural quirk is mandatory full-number dialing with no trunk zero. Portugal switched to a closed numbering plan on 31 October 1999 and abolished the old trunk prefix 0 entirely (Telephone numbers in Portugal, Wikipedia). Every number is exactly 9 digits and the area code is always dialed, even locally, so a Lisbon resident calling a neighbor still dials all of 21x xxx xxx. For callers from abroad this is actually simpler than most of Europe: there is no leading 0 to strip. If someone hands you a Portuguese number written with a (0) in front, that zero is a fossil from before 1999 and should be ignored, not dialed.
Number portability creates real confusion. Portability arrived in 2001 for landlines and 2002 for mobiles, and a ported number keeps its original prefix (ANACOM Number portability). That means the old habit of reading the first two digits (91 Vodafone, 92 MEO, 93 NOS, 96 MEO) to guess someone's carrier no longer holds. ANACOM's fix, live since 30 June 2003, is that when you call a ported mobile from within Portugal you hear a short free audio message naming the new network at the start of the call (ANACOM ported-number notice). International callers do not get that message, so from the US the prefix tells you nothing about the current operator.
Scam and spoofed calls are a serious and growing problem. ANACOM itself has been impersonated: fraudsters have spoofed its official freephone customer line 800 206 665 to appear on victims' caller ID, posing as staff, invoking the Polícia Judiciária, and threatening to block numbers or services (ANACOM fraud alert). The regulator stresses it never makes unsolicited calls or asks for personal data by phone. A genuine caution when calling Portuguese numbers: legitimate businesses use freephone 800 or geographic 2 lines, while 760/761/762 premium-rate, 707/708 shared-cost, and 30x nomadic/VoIP ranges behave differently and should be treated with care (ANACOM National Numbering Plan).
One practical reachability wrinkle: many Portuguese banks, utilities, and government hotlines publish 707 or 808 shared-cost lines that often will not accept calls originating outside Portugal at all, so an emigrant trying to reach their bank from abroad frequently has to hunt for the geographic +351 2x fallback number instead.
A Portuguese number is always 9 digits, written in Portugal in three groups such as 21 123 4567 or 91 234 5678. There is no variable length to worry about and no trunk zero: the full national number is the number (Telephone numbers in Portugal, Wikipedia). The first digit is the whole story. 2 means a geographic landline, 9 means a mobile, and the special ranges (800, 808, 707, 760, 30) each signal a specific service and cost behavior.
For landlines the area code is baked into the leading digits. Lisbon is 21 and Porto is 22, the only two-digit metro codes; everywhere else uses a three-digit code such as 239 Coimbra, 234 Aveiro, 253 Braga, 265 Setúbal, 244 Leiria, 266 Évora, and 289 Faro in the Algarve (Portugal area codes). The islands are unmistakable: 291 is Funchal in Madeira and 296 is Ponta Delgada in the Azores. If you see a number opening with 29, you are calling the Atlantic archipelagos, not the mainland.
Portugal's mobile numbering is a story of running out of numbers. The original ranges 91, 93, and 96 were exhausted, which is exactly why ANACOM had to activate the 92 range for mobile service, approved in July 2007 at TMN's request (ANACOM 92 range decision). Today the four live mobile prefixes are 91, 92, 93, and 96, each historically tied to an operator (91 Vodafone, 93 NOS, 92 and 96 MEO), though portability has scrambled that mapping since 2002.
To reach a person quickly, aim for the mobile. Portugal has extremely high mobile penetration and most people, including elders whose landline sits unused, carry a phone with a 9 number. WhatsApp is ubiquitous in Portugal, so many Portuguese expect voice contact through it, but a direct phone call still reaches everyone, including the many older relatives in rural Minho, Trás-os-Montes, and the Azores who do not keep a smartphone app open. Calling their mobile or their village landline (a 2x number) is often the surest way through.
Reaching Portuguese businesses and institutions rewards knowing the number ranges. A restaurant in Cascais, a clinic in Porto, or a hotel in Lagos will publish a geographic 2x line or a 9 mobile, both of which international callers can dial normally. Trouble starts with the cost-shared service ranges: 808 and 707 numbers are common for airlines, insurers, and telecom support desks, and these are frequently blocked to international origins or route only within Portugal, so from the US you may need the company's alternative +351 21 or +351 22 switchboard.
For government and emergency contact, note that the pan-European emergency number 112 works throughout Portugal but is for in-country emergencies, not something you dial from abroad. Public services increasingly steer people to freephone 800 lines (like ANACOM's own 800 206 665), which again typically do not accept overseas calls. When you need a Portuguese ministry, tax office (Finanças), or social security line from outside the country, look specifically for a geographic 2x number, which is the version that reliably connects from anywhere (ANACOM National Numbering Plan).
Timing matters more for Portugal than the small offset suggests, because of the midday rhythm and the island split. Mainland Portugal keeps Western European Time (UTC+0) with summer daylight saving (WEST, UTC+1), the same clock as the UK and one hour behind most of continental Europe. That puts the mainland 5 hours ahead of US Eastern. Portuguese life runs late: dinner is often after 8 PM, so an evening family call from the US (which lands late night in Portugal) can still catch people awake, but a mid-afternoon Portugal call is safest from the US mid-morning (early morning on the West Coast).
The Azores are the exception you must plan around. Ponta Delgada, Angra, and Horta sit one hour behind the mainland at UTC-1 (summer UTC+0), making them only 4 hours ahead of US Eastern. That single hour is a gift for New England families: a 6 PM call from Fall River reaches an Azorean relative at 10 PM, comfortably before bed. Madeira, despite being far out in the Atlantic, keeps mainland time, so Funchal is on the same clock as Lisbon.
With InternationalCall.co you place the call from a web browser: no app to install, no SIM, and nothing for the person in Portugal to set up. You dial their normal +351 mobile or landline and their phone rings like any other call, whether it is a 96 mobile in Lisbon or a 296 landline in the Azores.
It runs on prepaid credit starting at $5, billed per minute, with the credit never expiring and no subscription or connection fee. There is one flat rate per country shown before you dial, and it does not change by time of day, so a call to a Portuguese mobile in the afternoon costs the same per minute as the same call at midnight. This is genuinely useful for the Portugal corridor, where the person you want (an elder in a Minho village, a cousin in Ponta Delgada) is exactly the person least likely to have a calling app, and a plain incoming call from a real number is what reaches them.
Exactly 9 digits, with no variation and no trunk zero. Portugal moved to a closed 9-digit numbering plan on 31 October 1999 and the area code is always part of the number, even for local calls (Telephone numbers in Portugal, Wikipedia).
Look at the first digit. 9 is a mobile (prefixes 91, 92, 93, 96) and 2 is a geographic landline (21 Lisbon, 22 Porto, three-digit codes elsewhere). Both are 9 digits and both are dialed the same way from abroad (ANACOM National Numbering Plan).
No. Unlike the UK, France, or Germany, Portugal has no trunk 0 to remove. Dial 011 351 then the full 9-digit number. If a number is printed with a (0) before it, that zero is left over from before the 1999 reform and should be ignored (Telephone numbers in Portugal, Wikipedia).
Those are shared-cost service ranges that are frequently restricted to calls originating inside Portugal and often will not connect internationally. Look for the business's geographic +351 21 or +351 22 line, which reaches from anywhere (ANACOM National Numbering Plan).
Not reliably anymore. Prefixes originally mapped to operators (91 Vodafone, 93 NOS, 92/96 MEO), but since mobile portability launched in 2002 a ported number keeps its old prefix. Within Portugal callers hear a free audio notice of the current network, but that message is not played to international callers (ANACOM Number portability).
The 29x codes are the islands. 291 is Funchal in Madeira and 296 is Ponta Delgada in the Azores. This matters for timing: the Azores run one hour behind the mainland (UTC-1), so they are only 4 hours ahead of US Eastern, while Madeira keeps Lisbon time (Portugal area codes).
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