For the families split between Cape Town and London, Perth and Pretoria, this is how you reach a South African mobile or landline the moment you need to.
Your first call to South Africa is on us: $1.00 in free credit when you sign up, no card needed.
Rates updated October 31, 2026
To reach a South Africa number from the United States, dial these three parts in order.
011 27 71 123 4567
From any mobile, anywhere in the world, you can dial +27 71 123 4567 instead. Press and hold 0 to type the +, and the phone picks the right access code for wherever you are.
Numbers in South Africa are written locally with a 0 in front, like 071 123 4567. Calling from abroad you leave that 0 out, so it becomes +27 71 123 4567.
Mobile numbers in South Africa are not all the same length (this example has 9 digits after +27), so a different count is not a mistake in itself. If a call does not connect, check the start of the number against the rule above.
Only the first part changes. Your access code replaces the 011, then 27 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.
Your first call to South Africa is on us: every new account starts with $1.00 in free credit, no card needed. After that, calls to South Africa are $0.52 a minute, billed by the minute with no connection fee, no monthly plan, and no minimum spend. You top up prepaid credit from $5, and it never expires.
Only for the time you actually talk.
Top up once, use it whenever.
Any number, nothing to install.
The heaviest inbound traffic to South African numbers comes from its enormous emigrant diaspora, and the largest single hub is the United Kingdom, where the 2021 census counted 217,180 South African-born residents in England and Wales and later surveys estimate closer to 298,000 SA-born people nationwide (South Africans in the UK, Wikipedia). These calls cluster from very specific London areas: SA-born Britons concentrate in South West London, in Putney, Wimbledon, Sutton, Merton, and across the Surrey commuter belt in Woking and Elmbridge (South Africans in the UK, Wikipedia). They ring 021 Cape Town and 011 Johannesburg landlines to check on aging parents and manage property, since remittances back to the Western Cape for home maintenance are a recurring theme in expat life (South Africans in the UK, Wikipedia).
Beyond the UK, the United States and the United Arab Emirates round out the top four diaspora destinations (South African diaspora, Wikipedia), so US-based children calling parents and Dubai-based professionals calling head office in Johannesburg are everyday patterns. Because South Africa keeps one time zone year-round, the gap never drifts on the SA side; it shifts only when the caller's own clocks change, as they do in the UK and the US but not in the UAE.
Australia is the mirror-image corridor, home to 189,207 South African-born residents at the 2021 Census, famously concentrated in Perth (so symbolic among expats it is a byword for the migration), plus Sydney and Brisbane (South African diaspora, Wikipedia). From inside South Africa, people dial back out to exactly these hubs: children in Perth, siblings in London, clients in the Gulf. The one quirk to know is that South Africa's international access code is 00, so a call from Cape Town to a UK mobile is dialed 00 44 then the number, dropping the UK's own trunk 0 (Telephone numbers in South Africa, Wikipedia).
On a South African mobile you can simply press + instead of 00, but from a Telkom landline the 00 prefix is the reliable way out. Common outbound destinations follow the diaspora map (+44 for the UK, +61 for Australia, +1 for the US, +971 for the UAE), and because there is no seasonal clock change locally, the gap to each destination moves only when the other end changes its own clocks (the UK, the US and Sydney do; the UAE and Perth do not).
Start with your international access code: 011 from the US and Canada, 00 from the UK, Europe, and most of the world, or simply + on any mobile.
Dial South Africa's country code, 27.
Drop the leading 0 (the trunk prefix) from the South African number, so a Cape Town line written 021 123 4567 becomes 21 123 4567.
Dial the remaining 9 digits: the area code without its 0 (21) plus the local number. The result is +27 21 123 4567.
For a mobile, do the same: 082 123 4567 becomes +27 82 123 4567. Landlines and mobiles follow one identical rule.
Every South African number is 10 digits with the leading 0, which you always drop when dialing from abroad, leaving a 9-digit national number after +27 (Telephone numbers in South Africa, Wikipedia). Do not add extra digits: since the 2007 closed numbering plan the area code is mandatory, but there is no separate long-distance step. Avoid the 0800, 0860, and 0861 service ranges from overseas, since they are built for domestic callers and usually will not connect internationally; use a company's direct 011/021 or 087 line instead. Mobiles (06x, 07x, 08x) and landlines (01x to 05x) use the exact same drop-the-0, add-+27 format.
Every standard South African number is 10 digits including the leading 0, and since 16 January 2007 you must always dial all of them: on that date the country moved to a closed numbering plan, ending the old shortcut of skipping the area code when calling within your own town (Telephone numbers in South Africa, Wikipedia). That leading 0 is a domestic trunk prefix, not part of the international number, so from abroad you drop it and add +27. Numbering is administered by ICASA under the National Numbering Plan Regulations of 2016, last amended in March 2023 (ICASA Numbering).
The single biggest source of confusion is mobile number portability. It has been live since 10 November 2006 and was extended to all number types when ICASA's portability rules took full effect in March 2022 (Telephone numbers in South Africa, Wikipedia). The upshot: a number starting 082 (originally Vodacom) or 083 (originally MTN) may now sit on any network, so the prefix tells you the original allocation, not who carries the call today. A related surprise for anyone who left years ago is the 06x expansion: for decades every cellphone began 082 or 083, but as those ranges filled ICASA opened 06x blocks (0603 to 0609 to MTN and Vodacom from 2013, with further 06x ranges like 066 and 069 assigned as recently as 2024), so a perfectly valid mobile can now start 060 (ICASA cracks open 06 range, TechCentral).
Two harder-to-reach categories trip up international callers. First, service numbers: 0800 FreeCall (toll-free), 0860 ShareCall, and 0861 MaxiCall are built for the domestic network, so dialing them from overseas usually fails, which is why a South African bank prints an 011/021 or 087 line for international customers (Telecoms Channel). Second, spam and caller-ID spoofing have made South Africans wary of unknown numbers: operators say RICA interception law limits their ability to filter call content, so scam robocalls persist and locals often ignore foreign or unrecognized numbers (TechCentral). A WhatsApp heads-up before you dial is the standard workaround.
South African landline codes are laid out by region, so the code tells you roughly where a call lands. Gauteng clusters in the 01x band: 011 Johannesburg (with 010 overlaid on the same metro), 012 Pretoria, and 016 Vaal Triangle (Telecoms Channel). The Western Cape sits in 02x: 021 Cape Town, 022 West Coast, 023 Worcester, 028 Overberg.
KwaZulu-Natal runs through 03x: 031 Durban, 033 Pietermaritzburg, 035 the North Coast, 039 the South Coast (Telecoms Channel). The Eastern Cape takes 04x: 041 Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth), 043 East London, 047 Mthatha. The Free State and Northern Cape share 05x: 051 Bloemfontein, 053 Kimberley, 057 Welkom.
The interior provinces fall between 013 and 018: 015 Polokwane in Limpopo, 013 Mpumalanga, 018 North West (Telecoms Channel). Because these are geographic, a fixed line still tells you the city, which is exactly what portability erased for mobiles. If a relative in Durban gives you an 031 number, it is a genuine Durban landline; give you an 082 and portability means it could ride on any network.
Businesses, banks, and government hotlines in South Africa mostly publish non-geographic service numbers rather than a plain landline, and these behave very differently from overseas. 0800 is true FreeCall (toll-free), where the business pays the whole cost, but only for callers inside South Africa (Telecoms Channel). 0860 is ShareCall and 0861 is MaxiCall, where the caller pays a local or national rate; 0862 to 0869 are premium-rate lines (Telephone numbers in South Africa, Wikipedia).
The catch for anyone calling from the US or UK is that most 0800, 0860, and 0861 numbers do not accept international calls at all. They are wired for the domestic network, so dialing +27 800... usually dead-ends. To reach a South African bank or insurer from abroad, look for the direct 011 or 021 switchboard they publish for international customers, not the toll-free line on the local billboard.
The 087 range is the exception worth recognizing: it is the standard prefix for VoIP and cloud business lines, fully portable between providers (Telecoms Channel). An 087 number is a real, callable national business line, and unlike the toll-free ranges it generally does connect internationally, so it is often the most reliable way to reach a South African company from overseas.
South Africa keeps one time zone, SAST at UTC+2, with no daylight saving, so the offset from the US shifts only when American clocks change, never South Africa's. That makes South Africa 6 hours ahead of US Eastern and 9 ahead of US Pacific from mid-March to early November, widening to 7 and 10 hours in US winter.
The practical result is that your morning is their afternoon and your afternoon is their night. A 7am call from New York lands at 1pm in Johannesburg (2pm in US winter), squarely in the working day; 10am East Coast is 4pm in Cape Town (9am East Coast in US winter), still fine to catch someone at the office or the school gate. Push past mid-afternoon Eastern and you risk waking people: 4pm in New York is 10pm in Durban (11pm in US winter).
For the Australian corridor the maths runs the other way. Perth (UTC+8) is 6 hours ahead of Johannesburg and Sydney is 8 ahead (9 during Australian daylight saving, October to April), so a South African calling family in Australia does best in their own morning to catch an Australian afternoon. Because there is no seasonal shift on the SA side, only the other country's clock changes ever move the gap, a small mercy when a single family is spread across three continents.
In everyday South Africa, the mobile is the phone. Landline penetration has fallen for years, and most people (especially younger relatives) are reachable only on a 06/07/08 mobile. Older parents and grandparents are the exception: many still keep a home landline on the family's original 011 or 021 code, and it is often the surest way to reach an elder who does not always carry a cellphone.
South Africans are heavy WhatsApp users, so an unknown incoming voice call from a foreign number can be met with suspicion given the local spam climate (TechCentral). A quick WhatsApp message first ("I'll phone you in five minutes") sharply improves pickup rates. When you do call a mobile, you dial it exactly like a landline from abroad: drop the 0, add +27, so 082 123 4567 becomes +27 82 123 4567.
For businesses, the number they answer fastest is usually their 087 VoIP line or their geographic switchboard, not the 0860 ShareCall number on their website. English is an official language and near-universal in commerce, so a call rarely hits a language barrier, but hours matter: most offices run roughly 8am to 5pm SAST, closing earlier on Fridays, which overlaps the US East Coast only until about 11am (10am in US winter).
Ten digits including the leading 0 for standard landlines and mobiles, for example 021 123 4567 or 082 123 4567. When you call from abroad you drop that 0 and dial +27 plus the remaining 9 digits. The only oddities are 14-digit machine numbers and short service codes, which you will not normally dial from overseas (Telephone numbers in South Africa, Wikipedia).
Mobiles begin 06, 07, or 08 (the classic 082 and 083, plus newer 07x and 06x ranges). Landlines use geographic codes from 011 up to 058 (011 Johannesburg, 021 Cape Town, 031 Durban). Both are 10 digits, so the first two or three digits are what distinguish them (Telecoms Channel).
Because of mobile number portability, live since 2006 and extended to all number types in March 2022. A number starting 082 (originally Vodacom) or 083 (originally MTN) may have been ported to a different operator, so the prefix is only the original allocation, not proof of the current network (Telephone numbers in South Africa, Wikipedia).
Yes. For decades every SA cellphone started 082 or 083, but ICASA opened the 06x range as those filled, giving blocks like 0603 to 0609 to MTN and Vodacom from 2013, with more 06x numbers (066, 069 and others) allocated as recently as 2024. A 06x mobile is completely valid, just newer (ICASA cracks open 06 range, TechCentral).
Those are domestic service ranges. 0800 is toll-free only inside South Africa, and 0860 ShareCall and 0861 MaxiCall are built for local callers, so they usually will not accept international calls. To reach a South African bank or company from overseas, use their direct 011 or 021 switchboard or an 087 line, which they publish for international customers (Telecoms Channel).
South Africa is UTC+2 year-round with no daylight saving, so it is 6 hours ahead of US Eastern during US daylight time (7 in US winter). Call in your morning: 7am to 11am Eastern lands at 1pm to 5pm in South Africa (2pm to 6pm in US winter). After about 3pm Eastern it is getting late in South Africa.
Your first call is on us. Sign up for $1.00 in free credit, no card needed, and dial any South Africa number right from your browser.
Start calling