Google Voice international calls: what to check before you dial

Google lists the free Google Voice service for personal Gmail accounts, and the Voice Starter and Voice Standard plans for individuals, as available in the US only. The free service also needs an existing phone number that your Voice calls can be forwarded to.

A new Google Voice number cannot make or receive calls or texts until its owner passes identity verification. You give your legal name and a government-issued ID; the answer is either instant or comes after a manual review that can take up to 3 business days.

Elsewhere, Google offers Google Voice to businesses as a Google Workspace add-on. Local numbers on Google's own calling plan are available in 14 countries: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US.

When you call from the US, almost all Google Voice calls to the US and Canada are free. On individual accounts, calls to other countries are paid per minute: on the free personal account you buy Google Voice credit in advance, and each international call is taken from it at the per-minute rate listed on Google's calling rates page. With a paid Voice Starter or Voice Standard plan you cannot buy credit; international calls appear on the monthly invoice instead.

The credit comes with rules that are easy to miss:

Google's help pages describe calls to the US and Canada as free when you call from the US. When you travel, they warn that your mobile carrier can charge international calling rates and extra roaming fees, and that international calls use minutes from your mobile phone plan. To make calls without roaming, Google suggests Wi-Fi or mobile data.

In some places calling from Google Voice is not available at all: Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. In India you can call other countries, but not numbers within India.

Google keeps the right not to connect any telephone number, at its sole discretion. Its terms give certain geographic locations, special services numbers, satellite phone services and other call forwarding services as examples.

The Google Voice acceptable use policy also bans inflating call traffic, for example traffic pumping and international revenue share fraud. When Google finds a possible violation, it may limit or end the user's access to Google Voice.

Google may reclaim a Voice number that has not been used to place calls or send texts for 3 months. Before that happens you get a warning with a reclaim date. Making a call, sending a text from the number or listening to your voicemail before that date keeps it.

After the reclaim date you have 45 days to get the number back. Your messages stay in the account, but the number cannot receive calls or texts until you restore it. If you live abroad and keep a US number mainly for occasional international calls, put a reminder in your calendar.

If you are outside the US, have no US account, or only need to call a number in another country now and then, a browser dialer does the same job without a Google Voice number to keep alive. Browzerphone runs in a browser tab on a laptop or desktop and calls phone numbers in 216 countries.

You sign up, top up a prepaid balance and pay per minute while you talk, at the rates shown on the rates page. The first call of up to 60 seconds is free and needs no card, so you can check that the line connects before you pay. Premium-rate numbers are not covered by the free minute.