Phone Number Length by Country

In depth

Countries with one fixed length

105 of the 245 countries in the data use a single length for every national number. The most common fixed lengths are below. This is the easy case: a check for exactly that many digits works.

Countries that allow many lengths

Other countries allow a range of lengths, so a single fixed-length check rejects real numbers there. These have the widest ranges in the data.

The longest possible numbers

The library's documentation says a national number is rejected as too long beyond 17 digits. These are the countries whose longest possible national number comes closest.

How this relates to the 15-digit rule

The ITU's E.164 standard limits a full international number to 15 digits including the country code. The library's data is more permissive than that for a few countries: the longest possible entry reaches 19 digits with its calling code, because the data describes every kind of number range the country uses, not only ordinary subscriber numbers. Use the table to see which lengths are possible in a country, and the validator to check a particular number.

Reading the table above

• National digits: the digits after the country calling code, without the trunk prefix (the 0 or 1 people dial inside the country).
• More than one length in a row means the country allows all of them.
• Add the length of the calling code to get the international length. For +44 and nine national digits that is 11 digits after the plus sign.