Phone numbers

Where numbers live

Phone numbers are managed in the dashboard under Settings → Phone numbers. There is no API for renting, porting, or releasing a number. The list shows every number on your account with its country, capabilities, assigned Finn, and monthly cost.

You do not need a number to test an agent. Test calls run without one. You need a number when you deploy against real callers. See quickstart-inbound and quickstart-outbound.

Renting a number

1. Go to Settings → Phone numbers → Buy Number.
2. Pick a country and area code, or choose "any".
3. Filter by capability (voice only, or voice plus SMS).
4. Choose a number from the available list and confirm.

Provisioning completes within seconds and the number appears in your inventory.

Numbers are available in 60+ countries. Regulated countries including India, France and Germany require KYC or business verification before a number is provisioned. The buy flow prompts for the required uploads. If you skip verification the number stays unprovisioned and calls to the destination country fail.

Monthly rates

Toll-free inbound is free for the caller. Per-minute telephony usage is billed separately from the monthly rental.

Capabilities

Not every number carries every capability, and availability varies by country and region. The buy flow shows what each number supports before you confirm. A voice-only number assigned to a flow that expects SMS fallback will not send anything, and the failure is silent at assignment time.

Bringing your own number

Two options if you already own a number elsewhere.

Porting transfers ownership. Go to Settings → Phone numbers → Port a Number, supply the Letter of Authorization and a recent bill from your current carrier, and submit. Porting takes 5-15 business days depending on country. You stop paying your previous provider once it completes.

SIP trunking leaves the number where it is and routes calls through Finn. Go to Settings → Telephony Account → Add SIP Trunk and supply your provider's SIP endpoint, credentials, and supported codecs, then configure which Finn answers calls from which DID. Codec mismatch on the trunk shows up as 5-10 seconds of silence after the call connects. See byoc-sip for trunk configuration detail.

Caller ID registration (US and Canada)

Outbound calls in the US and Canada must comply with STIR/SHAKEN attestation. The platform handles attestation. CNAM and brand registration are yours to submit, under Settings → Phone numbers → [Number] → Caller ID Registration, with your business name, EIN, and intended call volume.

Carrier review takes 1-3 weeks. Start it early. An unregistered high-volume number gets labeled "SPAM LIKELY" by carriers and answer rates collapse. This is the single most common cause of a campaign underperforming for reasons unrelated to the agent.

Assigning a number

There are two assignment models.

Per-deployment. The deployment launch screen picks the from-number. One number can serve many deployments. This is the usual choice for outbound work. See outbound-campaigns.

Per-number. Set Settings → Phone numbers → [Number] → Default Inbound Finn. That Finn answers whenever the number rings. Use this for receptionist-style cases where the number is the brand and the agent behind it rarely changes. Inbound routing rules on top of this are covered in inbound-routing.

Number pools

A single DID cannot carry thousands of simultaneous outbound calls. Create a pool under Settings → Phone numbers → Pools → Create Pool, add numbers, and assign the pool to a parallel deployment instead of a single from-number. The dispatcher round-robins across the pool.

Rule of thumb is roughly one number per 50 concurrent calls, with a minimum of 10 numbers in a pool. Pools also reduce the chance a recipient sees the same number ringing them repeatedly. See concurrency for how concurrent call limits are set.

Releasing a number

Settings → Phone numbers → [Number] → Release. The number leaves your inventory immediately and monthly fees stop pro-rating from the release date.

Released numbers usually cannot be recovered. Released US and Canada numbers enter a 30-day quarantine before reassignment, so you cannot re-rent your own number back. If a number matters, port it out to a carrier you control instead of releasing it.

Troubleshooting

See also telephony-overview and troubleshooting.