With Skype Gone, What’s the Best App for Calling Overseas Numbers Now?

For the past fifteen years or so, whenever I’ve needed to make a call or send a text to almost any international phone number, I’ve used Skype. That’s equally true whether I’ve been in my living room at home or traveling anywhere else on the planet.

Via the app’s Skype to Phone service, for a few cents a minute, I’ve sat on hold to call centers all over the world, phoned taxis and hotels when I’ve arrived in foreign countries, and texted with my neighbor when I was in Pakistan and he was wondering why water was dripping from his light sockets. Long story.

Like everyone else in the world, I’d long since given up using Skype for anything else, but unlike everyone else, I was actually sad when Microsoft announced its imminent shutdown earlier this month. How was I going to call and text overseas cheaply now?

I’ve spent the last few days testing every alternative I can find, looking for a replacement that works as well and costs about the same. There are disappointingly few aimed at the general public instead of businesses, I have to say, and even fewer that met my needs.

My requirements were as follows:

• VoIP-based. This means I can use it anywhere I have an internet connection, so it’s accessible over Wi-Fi or when I only have data service on my phone. Since most travel eSIMs are data-only and they’re what I now generally use while overseas, this is a common scenario.
• Pay-As-You-Go. I don’t call or text international numbers very often, so I need a service that lets me buy some credit and then use it per-minute or per-text, not a monthly subscription.
• Affordable. Based on what I was paying with Skype and how I used it, I was after something that cost very little to call/text countries like the US and UK, and wasn’t prohibitively expensive in most other places.
• Global. I need to be able to sign up and use the app from any country, and make calls to most if not all countries in the world. Services that require me to live in a particular country or only let me call one or a few specified countries are no use.

A few other things that I was looking for but weren’t deal-breakers were:

• A semi-permanent phone number. While I don’t need a persistent number that I can be contacted on while traveling, I know people who do, and it’s not impossible that I could want one in the future. The ability to buy and keep one for as long as needed is useful, especially if I get a choice of countries.
• Automatic top-up. The first time I was cut off in the middle of an important phone call because I ran out of credit, I quickly discovered the value of Skype’s auto-topup feature.
• Desktop and mobile support. While Android and iOS apps are obviously a no-brainer, I’d also like to be able to use the service from my laptop. I don’t care whether that’s a website or a desktop app, but one or both would be good.

With all that out the way, let’s take a look at what I found, how well (or badly) it worked, and what I’m going to be using going forward.

I had the foresight to sign up for a Google Voice number when I was traveling in the US years ago, and verified it using the number attached to the prepaid local SIM card I had at the time. That number is long gone, but Google Voice has kept working for me ever since.

I’ve used it whenever I need to call a US number, and because it works anywhere I’ve got data service, it’s also my first choice for apps and websites that like to send one-time codes.

Why have I used Google Voice to call US numbers and Skype to call everything else, you may ask? Simply because calls to almost all numbers in the United States and Canada are free, regardless of where you’re calling from. It’s hard to compete with that.

Voice also offers SMS texting, although it’s limited in scope. You can receive texts from anywhere in the world for free, but only send texts to US and Canadian numbers. Those texts are free, at least, and it’s still more than what’s on offer from other providers.

The app is fine: functional rather than pretty, but it does what you need it to, with separate sections for calls, texts, and voicemail. Incoming calls and texts show up in real-time on my phone: other than the icon, there’s little to differentiate them from the usual versions.

There’s no desktop app, but there is an ugly website version that does all the same things as the mobile app, just with even less visual appeal.

If you never plan to call numbers outside the US and Canada, there’s no need to add credit: you can happily call those numbers with a zero balance, which is what I did for years.

When you do need to top up, however, the process is easy enough, using a saved card via Google Pay in the app or website. You can only choose between $10, $20, and $50, with a maximum of $70 credit on your account.

Call quality has always been fine for me, whether I’m calling the US or anywhere else. As usual with VoIP service, the quality of your internet connection will have a direct impact, but with decent Wi-Fi or cell data speeds, there’s been little in the way of quality problems or call drop-outs to report.

Call prices are consistently the lowest I’ve come across for pay-as-you-go service, even if you exclude those free US/Canadian calls. There’s a comparison table for various countries down below, but as an example, a five-minute call to Australia cost me all of 5c.

Like any Google service that’s not a core part of its business, it feels like there’s always a risk that the company will just shut Voice down one day. For now, though, it’s cheap, effective, and easy to use, just as long as you can manage to sign up in the first place.

If you’re only making occasional calls like I do, you’ll just need to top up your wallet with some credit and pay as you go. If you plan to make a lot of them, though, unlimited calls to 57 countries costs $5.99/month.

With the pay-as-you-go plan (called World Credits in the app), you top up with between $5 and $20, paid by credit or debit card. The larger top-ups give a dollar or two of extra credit on top of whatever you’ve paid.

Calling rates are generally pretty good: not as cheap as Google Voice, but not far off it in most cases. There are some strange anomalies, mind you: I’m really not sure why it costs 2.2c a minute to ring France, but 16.5c/min to call across the Channel to the UK. Using that five-minute Australia call from earlier as an example, I paid 11.5c.

Call quality has been pretty good, pretty much on par with a standard cellular call. Voices on both ends have generally had a slight “tinny” sound, but I haven’t noticed any echo, lag, or dropouts whether on Wi-Fi or cell data.

Interesting, Viber Out fakes the Caller ID when you make a call: the person on the other end will see the number you signed up with. That’s probably a good thing, since it means regular contacts will recognise who the call is from.

Topping up is straightforward: pick from a few pre-selected amounts or choose your own, then enter your card details and pay. There’s a 35c service fee for top-ups under $20, so I guess if you think you’ll eventually use twenty bucks of data and calls, add that amount and save yourself a bit of money.

Call quality was at least as good if not better than most cellular calls I make, with no delays or drop in quality. The call showed up as being from a UK number.

You don’t get your own phone number with Roamless, and there’s no option to pay for one. Their service is strictly for data and outbound calling only: that suits me fine, as it’s exactly how I want to use it, but may not be for everyone.

If you’re already using the Roamless eSIM for data, being able to use the same app and prepaid credit to make the odd international call is very convenient.

The pricing isn’t as good as Google Voice or (mostly) Viber, but it’s still pretty cheap, and if you only need to call a hotel or taxi now and again, the few cents a minute difference doesn’t matter as much.

Unlike Google Voice, there’s no limitation on where you can sign up from. If you can install the app and have a functioning payment card, you’re good to go.

If you’re looking for a convenient way of having data service everywhere and making occasional international calls as well, Roamless is a pretty compelling option.

Call Costs Per Minute (USD)

Other Services I Considered

The three apps I talk about above are the only ones I found that fitted my needs, but I took a look at several others before discounting them for one reason or another. Some of those included:

Dingtone seemed promising, offering cheap international calls and texts, but the support pages were full of broken links and customer reviews were pretty bad. Stories abound of advertised rates not matching what got charged, zero support, and onerous verification requirements.

Still, I figured it might be worth a look, right up until I installed the app and read through the terms of service. At that point, I quickly removed it: it needed far too many permissions and collected too much of my data for an app I’d only use occasionally. No thanks.

Libon is an interesting option, aimed mainly at diaspora communities around the world, and offering everything from cheap phone calls to paying electricity bills and topping up mobile credit.

Pricing is pretty weird, though. In some parts of the world, it’s very cheap (the US and Brazil are just 1c/minute, and India isn’t much more) but in others, it’s much more expensive. France and the UK are 33c/min, for example!

In the end, the pricing wasn’t competitive for the places I mostly call and travel to, so I didn’t investigate further. Depending on where you think you might be calling and how often you’ll be doing it, Libon might still make sense for you. It just doesn’t for me.

TextFree is an ad-supported service that, despite the name, also offers international calling. There’s no charge for this (like I say, it’s the ads that pay for it), so it sounded like it could be a good option, at least if you don’t mind watching ads.

Until I read the fine print, that is, and realised that while you can receive calls from anywhere, you can only make outbound calls to the US and Canada, Singapore, India, and landlines in Mexico. That’s it. Again, this might work for some people, but not me.

Conclusion

Before starting to research this article, I naively assumed that good alternatives to Skype for cheap international calls would be a dime a dozen. That’s very much not the case, at least not for the kind of occasional, non-business use that I need.

While there are quite a few that offer monthly subscription models if you expect to make a lot of international calls, reliable, cheap, pay-as-you-go services are few and far between.

If you’re from the US, or otherwise have access to a US number that can receive a verification text or call during setup, Google Voice is the best option. It has the cheapest per-minute prices to pretty much anywhere plus free calls to the US and Canada, includes a phone number, and has always worked well for me.

If you can’t get a Google Voice account set up, I’d recommend Roamless if you don’t expect to make a lot of calls, or Viber Out if you do.

Roamless has the benefit of also offering good-value eSIM data that uses the same credit balance, while Viber generally (but not always) has cheaper per-minute rates or unlimited calls to 50+ countries for a reasonable monthly fee.

One thing I was very surprised by from all of the providers was the lack of options around sending international SMS. I didn’t use this aspect of Skype all the time by any means, but did use it now and then, and valued it greatly when I did.

Nobody else is offering it in anything like the same way: Google Voice lets you receive texts from anywhere but only send them to the US and Canada, and the others don’t offer SMS service at all.

There are other companies out there that let you pay per month for a dedicated number that includes international SMS service (either bundled or pay-as-you-go), but unless you really need it, signing up for a subscription just to send the occasional text is an expensive option.

So there you have it. There are no one-for-one Skype alternatives for international calling that I could find, but there are at least ways to keep making cheap calls to anywhere, from anywhere in the world that I have a data connection. Let’s call that a win.

Have you come across a different app or service that lets you make cheap international calls without needing a subscription, can be signed up for and used from anywhere, and works over Wi-Fi or data? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Main image via Vlad Teodor/Shutterstock.com, screenshots via author