Understanding Rates and Per-Minute Billing

Calling on CallTuv is pay-as-you-go: there's no subscription, no monthly fee, and no contract. The one optional monthly charge is renting your own US number. All pricing is in USD. You top up a credit balance, and each call is charged per minute at the destination's rate - never for time you don't use.

Is there an unlimited plan or a calling package?

Not at the moment, and it's a deliberate choice rather than something we haven't got round to. CallTuv has no unlimited calling package, no minute bundles, no monthly plan and no contract. There's one way to pay for calls here, and it's the credit balance described above.

The thinking is simple. A package charges you for the whole month whether you call or not, and the minutes it gives you usually expire at the end of it. Credit works the other way round: you pay only for the minutes you actually talk, at the rate you were shown before you dialled, and whatever you don't use stays on your account for next time, because credit never expires.

If topping up often is the part you'd rather avoid, you have two ways round it:

• Add a larger amount in one go. The website and the apps take anything from $5 up to $500 - see How to Top Up Your Balance.
• Turn on auto top-up. Credit is added automatically whenever your balance runs low, so you never think about it again.

How rates are set

Every destination country has its own per-minute rate, and some destinations price landline and mobile numbers differently. The rate depends on where you're calling to, not where you're calling from - calling Germany costs the same whether you're in Tel Aviv, London, or New York.

Check a rate before you call

• Type or paste the number into the rate checker at the top of the rates page. You get the price for that exact number, and you don't need an account or any credit to see it.
• Browse or search any country on the same page to see that country's landline and mobile rates.
• In the dialer (web and mobile), just type the number - the exact per-minute rate appears before you press call, including whether the number is a landline or mobile. You don't need any credit to view rates.
• During the call, the live cost is displayed on screen, so there are never surprises.

You can also estimate a longer call in advance with the call cost calculator, which works from country rates rather than one specific number.

When a number costs more than the country rate

A country rate is the usual price for that destination, and it covers the great majority of numbers there. A small number of ranges inside a country - certain mobile ranges, personal numbers, and special-service numbers - cost more to reach, so they're priced higher than the country's headline rate.

There's no way to tell this by looking at a number, so don't try. Instead, check the number itself:

1. Go to the rates page and type or paste the full number into the rate checker at the top.
2. Read the price shown under Rate for this number. That is the per-minute price you'll pay for that number, and the same price the dialer shows you before you call.

The dialer always shows the real price for the number you typed before you press call, so you're never charged a rate you weren't shown first.

Your caller ID is part of the price

A rate belongs to the route - the pair of "the number your call goes out from" and "the number you're calling" - not to the destination alone. So the same destination can price differently depending on whether you're calling from Shared Numbers, from a US number you rent, or from your own verified number. That's what the words "different rates may apply" under your own number in the caller ID list are telling you.

You don't need to look anything up. The per-minute price the dialer shows before you press call is already worked out for the caller ID you have selected, and it updates if you switch. Note that the rates pages on the website quote the Shared Numbers route, since a public page can't know which caller ID your account uses. Switching or Removing Your Caller ID walks through comparing the two.

How a call is charged

1. When the call connects, per-minute billing starts against your team's credit balance.
2. Durations round up to the nearest minute - a call of 1 minute 10 seconds deducts 2 minutes.
3. If the call doesn't connect, you're not charged.

Starting a call requires credit for at least 3 minutes at the destination rate - see Minimum Balance to Start a Call. And if the balance can't cover the next minute mid-call, the call ends - auto top-up prevents that.

Does the person you call pay anything?

Not to CallTuv. The per-minute rate you see in the dialer is the whole cost of the call, and it comes out of your balance only. On the other end, your call arrives as an ordinary incoming call from a regular phone number - the person needs no app, no account, and no internet connection, and CallTuv never charges them anything.

The one thing to know is that receiving the call is, to their phone company, the same as receiving any other call. In most countries that costs them nothing. A few mobile plans, mainly in the United States and Canada, count incoming calls against the plan's minutes, exactly as they would for any other caller - that's between them and their provider, and it's no different because the call came through CallTuv.

Where to see what you've spent

Your call history shows the duration and cost of every call, and the Invoices tab on the Team page lists all top-ups, plus the monthly fee for any rented US number, marked Phone number. Every top-up also gets an invoice sent to your account email - see Invoices, Receipts, and VAT Details.