How Can I Make Free or Cheap Calls to Someone Outside the U.S.?

You don’t have to pay a pretty penny to phone a loved one living abroad or traveling overseas

Edward C. Baig,

AARP

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Published March 04, 2025

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My grandson graduated from college and is spending a few months in Europe. I also have other relatives living around the world. I want to call them from the U.S. but can’t afford to run up ginormous phone bills. What are my options?

I can relate: My college-age daughter, Sydney, is spending a semester studying in Sydney, Australia — yes, Sydney is in Sydney.

And we found out the hard way how expensive overseas calls from North America can be.

Ahead of Sydney’s trip, as part of the regular wireless plan I share with my family, a 5-minute call we made to her school Down Under cost $16.89 including taxes. With the same account, a recent 26-minute call my wife made to the United Kingdom for work cost $87.81 with taxes.

With a bit more planning, we could have saved plenty of dough on these calls. And you can too on calls from the United States to loved ones outside the country.

Through the internet, folks can make cheap and sometimes free calls “across the pond,” as the Brits are fond of saying, as well as to numerous global destinations.

To be clear, I’m not speaking of calls Sydney makes in Australia to other local numbers, or calls that your grandkid makes within Europe. Physical SIM cards and digital eSIMs that can be purchased while they’re abroad address this purpose.

I’m talking about calls from here to over there.

Investigate plans from your current mobile provider

The three major U.S. wireless carriers each have international calling plans that are add-ons to your existing mobile plan. Whether such plans make sense may depend on where and how often you expect to call overseas. Certain numbers may be excluded.

T-Mobile. T-Mobile’s Stateside International plan costs $15 a month per line, which the company advertises buys you unlimited calls from the U.S., Canada and Mexico to landlines in more than 70 countries and mobile lines in more than 30 countries. The mobile lines list includes China; Czechia, also known as the Czech Republic; France; Germany; Hungary; India; Italy; Portugal; South Korea; and the U.K.

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Discounted rates are available in other countries.

For example, calls under the plan made to a landline in Australia are free and priced at just 7 cents a minute mobile to mobile. That’s a heck of a lot cheaper than the $3-a-minute charge on calls to Australia, England and elsewhere without the plan.

Under a limited-time promotion, T-Mobile is also offering a $20-per-account plan for the entire family.

AT&T. AT&T International Calling, also $15 a month per line, provides unlimited free talk to 85 countries, including Australia, China, Germany, India and the U.K. Discounted international long-distance rates apply to more than 140 countries.

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As with T-Mobile, pay-per-use rates are more expensive. Calls to Australia are priced at $4 a minute and England $3 a minute.

Verizon has a few international options. The company’s Global Choice plan costs $10 a month per line and gives you a set bundle of minutes at discounted rates to a country of your choice, potentially useful when the person you frequently call stays put in that country.

In Australia, for instance, you get a monthly allowance of 300 minutes — that’s five hours total — priced at a nickel a minute, same as the U.K.

If you don’t want to limit calls to a designated country, Verizon has a $5 a line per month Global Calling plan that provides discounts to 220 countries, plus unlimited calling to Canada and Mexico. Under this plan, landline calls in Australia cost 7 cents a minute, mobile numbers 23 cents a minute.

A $15-a-month Global Calling Plus plan gives you unlimited access to landlines in more than 60 countries and mobile numbers in 30 countries. Without any of these plans, Verizon calls to Australia cost $2.49 a minute, regardless of whether you’re calling a cellphone or landline.

Make calls through the internet

If you have a stable Wi-Fi connection, you can call loved ones in a foreign country gratis with certain apps, though a typical catch is that you and the recipient of the call must both have the same app for the connection to be free. Added benefit: You can call from a computer as well as a smartphone.

Of course, through the pandemic, people got accustomed to making video calls over Zoom, Microsoft Teams and other services.

FaceTime from Apple, Rakuten Viber and Meta-owned WhatsApp are among the popular choices for making calls through an app.

The WhatsApp option. Most of our Australia calls to Sydney have been via WhatsApp, including group calls that let the entire family chat even when we’re in different places, and video calls that let us be seen as well as heard. We merely tap her name to call, without entering overseas calling codes.

Voice and video quality have been excellent. Communications are also encrypted and thus kept private.

Google Voice alternative. If you have a Google Voice phone number, you can take advantage of extremely low international rates to some places, though prices vary by region. Calls to landline and mobile phones in Australia cost just a penny a minute, same as the U.K.

To make paid calls in Google Voice, you have to buy credit in intervals of $10, $25 or $50, though Google says you cannot have an account balance that exceeds $70. You’ll be prompted to add money if you don’t have adequate funds for a call.

Skype shutting down. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention internet calling pioneer Skype, which current owner Microsoft announced will be shutting down May 5 more than two decades after its launch. Skype-to-Skype calls were free, and I periodically used Skype through the years on a pay-as-you-go basis to make inexpensive calls abroad to regular landlines and mobile numbers.

With Skype going bye-bye, Microsoft is encouraging Skype users to migrate to Teams, which is free.

The writing has been on the wall. Late last year, Microsoft discontinued the sale of new Skype credits you could use for calls in favor of Skype-to-phone subscription plans.

As part of the transition, consumers can use their Skype credentials to sign into the Teams app. Microsoft says Skype contacts and any chat history will show up, so folks can pick up where they left off and customers can use up existing Skype credits and subscriptions until the end of their next renewal period.

However, new Skype subscriptions that let you make cheap calls overseas will cease to exist.

Bonus tip: Consider a prepaid card for international calls

Pre-paying for minutes on international calls may save money, plus you’ll have a degree of certainty since your bill amount is fixed. You pay for a designated allotment of minutes to certain destinations, with calling rates that are often lower than what you might otherwise get from long-distance providers.

But the Federal Communications Commission warns users to look out for hidden fees when using prepaid cards. Watch out for expiration dates to avoid losing unused minutes.

Check whether minutes apply to a single call or multiple calls. And make sure you won’t be charged even when a call does not go through.

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Edward C. Baig covers technology and other consumer topics. He previously worked for USA Today, BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report and Fortune, and is author of Macs for Dummies and coauthor of iPhone for Dummies and iPad for Dummies. Follow him on LinkedIn; Threads; and X, formerly known as Twitter.