Egypt country code: how to call Egypt

Egypt’s numbering has one feature that no amount of practice makes obvious: a mobile number and a landline are not the same length. Once you know that, both are easy to dial from anywhere.

Mobile numbers

An Egyptian mobile number is eleven digits when written inside the country, and it begins with a zero. The prefixes in use are 010, 011, 012 and 015, followed by eight more digits.

From abroad, you drop the leading zero and add the country code. So 010 1234 5678 becomes +20 10 1234 5678, which is ten digits after the plus.

That extra digit is the reason the widget below needs to know which kind of number you have. A mobile is one digit longer than a landline once the zero goes, and it tells the two apart by length alone.

Landlines

Landlines are shorter, and the reason is the area code. Cairo is simply 2, and Alexandria is 3. Other governorates use two digits, so a number in Luxor or Aswan looks different again.

A Cairo landline written inside Egypt as 02 2345 6789 becomes +20 2 2345 6789 from abroad, which is nine digits after the plus. Dial it with the zero still attached and the call will not connect, because the network has been given a digit it cannot place.

Prefixes, and why they no longer tell you much

The prefix 010, 011, 012 or 015 once identified the network the number was on, and people used it to work out which calls would be cheap and which would not.

Mobile number portability changed that. Since 2008 Egyptians have been able to keep their number when they change network, so a number starting 010 may not be on the network that prefix originally belonged to. It is a useful hint and not a fact.

For a visitor this matters very little, because you are dialling a person rather than choosing a network. It matters if you are buying a local SIM and trying to work out which network has the better coverage in the place you are going, and for that the prefix is the wrong tool anyway.

Calling without a phone line

If you travel with a data only eSIM, you have no voice line in Egypt. That is less of a limitation than it sounds.

Apps such as WhatsApp, Signal and FaceTime will call a normal Egyptian number over your data connection, and most Egyptian businesses, hotels and tour operators are comfortable with that. Many of them prefer it, and will answer a WhatsApp message faster than a call.

What you cannot do is receive a call on an Egyptian number, because you do not have one. If people need to reach you, keep your own line switched on for incoming calls while the travel eSIM carries the data, which is the arrangement running two lines at once describes.

Calling from inside Egypt

Egyptians dial the full number with the zero, because the country uses an open numbering plan where the area code is part of the number rather than something you can leave off locally. Calling a Cairo landline from Aswan means dialling 2 and then eight digits, exactly as a Cairo resident would.

The exception worth knowing is a hotel switchboard. Some hotels will place a call for you at a charge, and the number the operator needs is the local one with its zero, not the international form. Handing over +20 2 2345 6789 to a switchboard operator often produces a puzzled pause.

From an Egyptian mobile the same applies: dial locally, with the zero. The international form only matters when the line you are calling from belongs to another country, which is what the widget above produces.

If the number will not connect

Four things go wrong, and all of them are quick to check.

The first is a leftover zero. If the number begins 00 after the country code, the trunk code is still attached and the network cannot place the call. Drop it.

The second is the wrong length. A mobile that comes out at nine digits after the plus has lost a digit somewhere, and a landline that comes out at ten has gained one. The widget shows the length it worked out, which makes this easy to catch before you dial.

The third is the country code itself. Egypt is +20, and it is easy to type 20 when you meant 2, or to borrow a code from a neighbouring country.

The fourth is roaming. A call is not data, so a disabled data roaming switch should not stop it, but a phone with roaming switched off can also refuse to register on a foreign network at all, and then nothing works. Check that the line is registered before you blame the number.

Before you call

One last detail about time. Egypt is two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time in winter and three in summer, so a call that suits you at nine in the evening may be late at night in Cairo. Check the offset before you dial, and remember that Friday is the day off rather than Sunday.

If the data side is what you are sorting out, an eSIM for Egypt covers it, and what a local SIM card costs is the comparison worth reading if you would rather buy on arrival.