# Phone validation API pricing in 2026: what eight services actually charge

> Real pricing for Twilio Lookup, Telnyx, Numverify, Abstract API, IPQS, Trestle, phonevalidator.com, and numlookupapi.com, compared against CheckThatPhone on cost per lookup, data depth, and compliance features.

Published 2026-08-15, updated 2026-10-12 by Marcus Whelan. Canonical: https://checkthatphone.com/blog/phone-validation-api-pricing-comparison

Every phone validation API advertises a price per lookup. What that price buys varies a lot. The cheapest plans return validity, carrier and line type but no porting field; the telecom platforms sell each signal as its own package; and litigator or do-not-call data is hard to find at any price.

I pulled current pricing from eight services people keep asking about (figures first checked August 2026 and rechecked against each provider's own pages on October 3, 2026; prices change, so verify before you commit budget) and lined them up against CheckThatPhone. The short version: the lowest list prices buy the fewest fields, the telecom platforms charge per signal (a fully stacked Twilio lookup runs $0.035), and only two of the eight sell any litigator or DNC data. Here's the long version.

## The comparison table

| Service | Per lookup | Free tier | Ported | Line active | Litigator scrub | Do-not-call |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CheckThatPhone | $0.0009 to $0.005 | 500 a month | Yes | Yes | +1 credit | Free: 38 states + DC, complainers |
| Twilio Lookup | $0.008 (line type) | Format checks | No | Paid package (Line Status) | No | No |
| Telnyx | $0.0015 (LRN only) | None (paid account) | Yes | Mobile, via HLR (per Telnyx) | No | No |
| Trestle | $0.015 | Free trial | No | Activity score | +$0.005 | No |
| IPQS | $0.005 to $0.008 (credit packs) | 1,000 a month | Add-on | Add-on | Add-on | `do_not_call` field, lists not named |
| Numverify | ~$0.0005 to $0.003 | 100 a month (non-commercial) | No | No | No | No |
| Abstract API | ~$0.0013 to $0.0038 | 100 a month | No | Line status | No | No |
| numlookupapi.com | ~$0.0004 to $0.002 | 100 a month | No | No | No | No |
| phonevalidator.com | $0.004 | Web and signup searches | US only | No | No | No, with a disclaimer |

Sources are each provider's own pricing, product or documentation pages: [Twilio Lookup](https://www.twilio.com/en-us/user-authentication-identity/pricing/lookup), [Telnyx](https://telnyx.com/pricing/number-lookup), [Trestle](https://trestleiq.com/pricing/), [IPQS](https://www.ipqualityscore.com/plans) (its prices appear only after you sign in to a free account; checked October 12, 2026), [Numverify](https://numverify.com/pricing), [Abstract API](https://www.abstractapi.com/pricing), [numlookupapi.com](https://numlookupapi.com/pricing), and [phonevalidator.com](https://www.phonevalidator.com/pricing). "Per lookup" runs from the smallest to the largest self-serve plan or pack. How each provider describes its data is quoted in the sections below.

Six of the eight return nothing about do-not-call status or litigation history. The two that do (Trestle and IPQS) sell it as an add-on. Keep that in mind as we go through the groups, because it changes the math for anyone doing outbound.

## Validation-first APIs: Numverify, Abstract API, numlookupapi.com

These three sit at the low end on price. All of them return validity, carrier, line type and location for numbers worldwide, and they describe their data differently. Numverify says requests are ["processed in real time, cross-checked against the latest international numbering plan databases."](https://docs.apilayer.com/numverify/docs/api-documentation) Abstract says it can ["check any phone number in real time"](https://www.abstractapi.com/api/phone-validation-api) and uses "several databases of numbers" with updates daily, weekly and monthly. numlookupapi.com says its validation returns carrier and line type ["without a network query."](https://numlookupapi.com/products/hlr-lookup-api/)

Numverify costs $14.99 a month for 5,000 requests and falls to about $0.0005 a request on its $129.99 Enterprise plan (250,000 requests). Its free plan, 100 requests a month, is for non-commercial use, and signup offers an optional Platinum Support add-on at $479.88 to $719.88 a year.

Abstract starts at $19 a month for 5,000 requests on its Starter plan, and its higher tiers add data rather than volume: Standard adds messaging details and Professional adds registered name, risk and breach data, each with fewer requests for the same price. The free plan is 100 requests a month with no card, and its docs say every submitted number counts as a credit, invalid ones included. The full head-to-head is in [CheckThatPhone vs Abstract API](/compare/abstract-api).

numlookupapi.com is $9.99 for 5,000 requests, and at its Scale tier the per-lookup cost drops to about $0.00044, the lowest number in this article.

What matters for outbound is what the responses leave out. None of the three documents a ported flag or a routing number, and only Abstract returns a line status. numlookupapi.com is upfront about it: ["A number that was ported to another operator keeps showing the original one."](https://numlookupapi.com/products/carrier-lookup-api/) If you're validating a signup form for a global app and want to reject typos, any of them is fine, and their country coverage (Numverify lists 232 countries, Abstract 190+) is a real advantage. (We go deeper on that trade-off in [CheckThatPhone vs Numverify](/compare/numverify).) If you're about to call or text US numbers, you also want to know whether the number was ported and whether it's still in service.

## Telecom platforms billing per signal: Twilio Lookup, Telnyx

Twilio Lookup and Telnyx describe their data as live. Twilio says Lookup ["checks live carrier network data"](https://www.twilio.com/en-us/user-authentication-identity/lookup) in real time, and Telnyx describes live LRN, HLR and caller-name lookups. Both charge separately for each piece of the answer.

Twilio's formatting and validation check is free. The useful data starts at $0.008 per request for Line Type Intelligence (carrier plus mobile/landline/VoIP classification). Line Status, the "is this number still reachable" signal, runs another $0.007 at low volume. Caller name is $0.01, US only. Reassigned Number starts at $0.02. Identity Match is $0.10 per request (varies by country). Stack line type, status and reassigned number and you're at $0.035 per number before anyone dials. Twilio's Lookup packages include no litigator or DNC data, though its US-only Reassigned Number check is built for TCPA consent. The full head-to-head is in [CheckThatPhone vs Twilio Lookup](/compare/twilio-lookup).

Telnyx prices lower per signal: $0.0015 for an LRN dip, $0.0025 for mobile carrier codes (MCC/MNC), $0.003 for caller name. If you only need portability-corrected routing, that $0.0015 LRN query is the lowest pay-as-you-go price on live data among the other services here. The catch is that Number Lookup isn't available on Telnyx's trial tier: you need a paid account, and stacking the packages lands around $0.007 per number. Telnyx covers international numbers, and its response has no DNC or litigator fields.

Both are strong at what they sell. Neither sells litigator or DNC screening.

## Fraud suites and data companies

IPQS bundles phone validation into a broader fraud-scoring product. The payload is rich (prepaid flag, abuse history, breach exposure and, as add-ons, active-line status and ported flags), and it's the only other service here with a DNC field, though its [documentation](https://www.ipqualityscore.com/documentation/phone-number-validation-api/response-parameters) is vague about it. `do_not_call` "indicates if the phone number is listed on any Do Not Call (DNC) lists" for US and Canadian numbers, without saying which lists, warns that the data "may not be 100% current," and returns null unless the feature is enabled through your account manager or support. The `tcpa_blacklist` field, for repeat TCPA plaintiffs, is an add-on enabled the same way, and IPQS also sells a separate [DNC and TCPA list scrub](https://www.ipqualityscore.com/tcpa-compliance/dnc-tcpa-phone-scrub). IPQS shows its prices only to signed-in accounts. As of October 12, 2026: monthly plans of $139.99 for 5,000 lookups, $599.99 for 10,000 and $1,149.99 for 75,000, or credit packs from $320 for 40,000 credits ($0.008 each) down to $1,500 for 300,000 ($0.005 each), with the credits shared across its proxy, email, phone and URL checks. The free tier is 1,000 lookups a month, capped at 35 a day. The "on average from $0.0005 per user" on its phone validation page is well below any listed plan or pack. The add-ons that matter for outbound (active line, ported, DNC, litigator) have no listed price, and several response fields are gated behind account upgrades even in the free tool.

Trestle is the closest thing CheckThatPhone has to a direct feature competitor. Its Phone Validation API returns an activity score from 0 to 100 (Trestle: "a score of 100 means consistent activity in the last 12 months, and a score of 0 means a disconnected number or no activity has been seen in the past year", built from "data points from publicly available records, carriers, and metadata attributes"), an eight-way line-type split that separates fixed from non-fixed VoIP, prepaid status, and an optional Litigator Check add-on at $0.005 per query that also covers CFPB, FDCPA and FCRA cases. At $0.015 a query it's the highest entry price in the table, though that one call already includes the activity score; Twilio reaches the same $0.015 once you add Line Status to Line Type. It's fifteen times our 100K-plan credit. There's no ongoing free tier, just a free trial, and Trestle doesn't bill 4xx or 5xx errors (a 200 response is billed even when it carries an error).

phonevalidator.com, which has been validating numbers since 2005, is worth mentioning because it shows up in searches constantly. Pay-as-you-go at $0.004 per line-type lookup with a real-time US ported check, no subscription, plus batch processing ($35 minimum per uploaded batch, none through their Batch by API). Two honest caveats from their own site: the ported check doesn't cover Canada, and their terms say the service is not "a compliance tool". They don't offer DNC scrubbing.

## Where CheckThatPhone lands

CheckThatPhone is scoped to US and Canadian numbers only. That's the trade we made: most of the services above cover numbers worldwide, so if you need 200 countries, use one of them and don't look back. The narrow scope is what pays for the depth.

One lookup, one credit, returns the whole picture: a live carrier dip at lookup time (carrier name, OCN, line type and sub-type), portability status with the LRN, deliverability including deactivation dates, an internal blacklist check, GeoIP with state, city, metro, and IANA timezone, and a recommended action so you're not writing your own decision logic on top of raw fields. The response carries 25+ fields. There is no per-field pricing. You don't pay one rate for line type and another to learn the number is dead.

The IP-to-geo piece deserves its own line, because it's a product other companies sell on its own. Include the contact's IP address in the request and the same credit returns their location down to city and metro, plus the IANA timezone and UTC offset. Teams normally buy that from a separate IP-geolocation service and stitch the two responses together. Here it rides along free, and it solves a specific compliance problem: the FCC's calling-hour rule (no solicitations before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m.) follows the local time at the called party's location ([47 CFR 64.1200(c)(1)](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-64/subpart-L/section-64.1200)), not what their area code says, and a 213 number can belong to someone who moved to Miami years ago. No IP on hand? The lookup falls back to area-code-based location, and the response tells you which source it used.

Credits cost $0.005 on the $5 plan, $0.003 on the $30 plan, $0.001 on the $100 plan, and $0.0009 on the $450 plan (500,000 credits a month, for teams running above 100,000), with 500 free credits every month to test against your real data. Two opt-in add-ons cost one extra credit each: the [TCPA litigator scrub](/use-cases/tcpa-litigator-scrub), which checks numbers against our litigator database refreshed daily from federal and state court activity, and the landline SMS check, which finds the landlines that can receive texts (charged only when the number is a landline).

And two checks cost nothing: the [state DNC and complainer checks](/use-cases/state-dnc-scrub). Set `dncState: true` and `dncComplainer: true` and every lookup also runs a state do-not-call check covering 38 states plus DC, refreshed weekly, plus a national list of roughly 700,000 telemarketing complainers. The state check reports whether it ran, so a number in one of the 12 states we don't cover reads as "not checked" instead of falsely reading as clear. Free means free here: neither ever adds a credit.

## The math on a real list

Say you're scrubbing 10,000 US numbers a month before a calling campaign, and you want line type, carrier, live status, litigator screening, and state DNC.

- **CheckThatPhone:** base lookup plus litigator is 2 credits per number, DNC rides along free. 20,000 credits lands around $60 on the 10K plan with overage, or a flat $100 on the 100K plan with room to run five times that volume. Past that, the 500K plan holds the per-credit price at $0.0009 all the way up.
- **Twilio:** line type ($80) plus line status ($70) gets you to $150, and its Lookup packages have no litigator or DNC screen. You'd bolt on a separate scrub vendor and a second integration.
- **Trestle:** $150 for validation plus $50 for the litigator check, $200 in all, and no DNC screen.
- **Numverify:** $59.99 on the Professional plan, for validity, carrier, line type and location. Its documented response has nothing on whether a number was ported, is still in service, belongs to a litigator, or is on a registry.
- **Abstract API:** $39 on Starter (15,000 requests), for validity, carrier, line type, line status and location. No ported, litigator or DNC fields.
- **IPQS:** $599.99 a month on the SMB Basic plan (10,000 lookups), or $80 worth of a $320 credit pack (40,000 credits at $0.008, shared with its other checks). Line status, DNC and litigator are add-ons you enable through your account manager or support, with no listed price.

That gap isn't a rounding error, and it compounds monthly.

## Which one should you pick?

It depends on the job. For US and Canadian outbound calling or texting, CheckThatPhone; for everything else, one of the others. Honest recommendations:

- **Global form validation, compliance irrelevant:** Numverify, Abstract API or numlookupapi.com. Low prices, wide coverage. (Numverify's free plan is non-commercial.)
- **You're already deep in the Twilio ecosystem:** Twilio Lookup's free formatting and validation check plus Line Type Intelligence is a reasonable path, just price out the add-on stack before committing.
- **Pay-as-you-go routing and LRN data:** Telnyx.
- **Phone data as part of a broader fraud program (IP, email and device risk from one vendor):** IPQS.
- **US/Canada outbound calling or texting, where lists decay and TCPA exposure is real:** this is the job CheckThatPhone was built for: litigator screening is a self-serve add-on and the state DNC check is free, in the same API call as validation.

The free tier is [500 credits a month](/pricing), enough to run a real slice of your list through and compare the results against whatever you're using now. The full response schema is in the [docs](/docs) if you want to see every field before you sign up for anything. For a feature-by-feature table against Twilio Lookup, Telnyx, and Numverify, see [CheckThatPhone vs other phone validation APIs](/blog/checkthatphone-vs-other-phone-validation-apis); the [comparison hub](/compare) collects every head-to-head, including [Abstract API](/compare/abstract-api), and [choosing a phone validation API](/blog/choosing-phone-validation-api-features) covers what to look for beyond price.

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CheckThatPhone is a phone validation API for US and Canada numbers: https://checkthatphone.com (docs: https://checkthatphone.com/docs.md, pricing: https://checkthatphone.com/pricing.md).