Guide · Updated October 6, 2026

What Replaced Skype for International Calls?

By the ChromePing team

Why nothing replaced Skype one-for-one

Skype did five different jobs for the people who paid for it, and the replacements each took one or two of them:

• A dial pad on a computer. You typed a number on a desktop and it rang a phone. Most of what gets called a “Skype alternative” today is a phone app first.
• Pay-as-you-go credit. You topped up a balance, spent it per minute, and never had a subscription to cancel.
• Calls to real landlines and mobiles. The person you called needed nothing — no app, no account — which is what made Skype useful for a parent’s landline or a clinic abroad.
• A Skype Number people could call. An incoming number that rang on your computer wherever you were.
• Skype Translator. Translated conversations, a feature most of the replacements below don’t offer. The options that do translate a live call are compared in how do I translate a phone conversation.

Microsoft’s own successor took the chat and the meetings, not the phone calls. Its retirement page says Teams “does not support paid calling plans on the free version of Teams”; Teams Free reaches a phone number only through the Skype Dial Pad, and only for people who still hold Skype Credit. Calling phone numbers from Teams otherwise means Teams Phone, a business add-on bought by an organization’s administrator on top of a Microsoft 365 or Teams licence.

So the useful question is which replacement covers the job you actually used. This post runs every option through four filters: does it need an app, does it need a US number or account, does it reach landlines, is it pay-as-you-go or a subscription.

Where Skype stands now

Can you still use Skype? Partly. This is the status Microsoft’s support pages give, checked in October 2026:

• Retired May 5, 2025. Consumer Skype, free and paid, ended that day. Skype for Business was separate and unaffected.
• Leftover Skype Credit still works. Remaining credit can be spent on calls to landlines and mobiles through the Skype Dial Pad, in the Skype web portal and inside Teams Free. No new credit can be bought, and automatic top-up ended in April 2025. Credit goes inactive after 180 days without use but can be reactivated; Microsoft has published no end date for using it.
• Subscriptions ended May 1, 2026. Any that ran past that date were cancelled and converted into Skype Credit, refundable on request through Skype support.
• Skype Numbers are gone. All Skype Number subscriptions ended in May 2026, and port-out requests are no longer accepted — the number cannot be moved to another provider.
• SMS, forwarding, voicemail and caller-ID setup stopped May 5, 2025. Existing caller-ID setups were deleted in February 2026.
• Data export closed June 15, 2026. Deletion began April 1, 2026; the deadline had been January 2026 until Microsoft extended it in December 2025. Contacts and chats of people who moved to Teams Free in time are still there; paid-call history is kept separately for up to ten years for tax purposes.

In short: if you still have credit, you can still dial. If you had a Skype Number, you need a new number. If you used Translator, you need a new service.

What people actually use now, by the job Skype did

Ask five ex-Skype users what they use now and you’ll get five answers, because each needed a different one of the five jobs. Here is each route, with what its own pages say it requires.

Google Voice: the US-only dial pad

Google Voice is the closest thing to Skype’s desktop dial pad, which is why it tops most lists — and why so many ex-Skype users outside the US bounce off it. The personal plan is a single-user plan that Google says is only available in the US. It needs a personal Gmail account and a phone number Google texts a code to during setup, which it then uses to forward calls. From the US, almost all calls to US and Canadian numbers are free; a few specific numbers cost 1¢ a minute. International calls use prepaid credit: the balance is capped at $70, minutes are billed in one-minute increments, and credit expires six months after you last used it.

Calls work in Chrome, Firefox, Edge or Safari at voice.google.com with no app, and to receive calls on a computer that tab has to be open. It can’t place emergency calls. Google’s international rates live inside the account rather than on a public page, so we don’t print them. Google also sells Voice as a Workspace add-on — Starter $10, Standard $20 and Premier $30 per user a month, in 14 countries including Canada, the UK, France, Germany and Spain — and as US-only standalone tiers at $10 and $20 a month. International calls are charged per minute on every tier.

App-based credit callers: Viber Out, Yolla, Rebtel, Talk360, BOSS Revolution

This is where most of Skype’s pay-as-you-go users went. All five call any mobile or landline, and the person you call needs nothing. The catch is the word “app”: each is built around a phone, and several push a monthly plan the moment you arrive. A newer group bundles a travel-data eSIM with a calling app; it is still a phone app, so it replaces Skype on a handset, not on a computer. Prices below are from each provider’s own pages, October 2026.

• Viber Out needs a Viber account activated with a real mobile number — internet numbers are rejected — and the desktop app only works after the phone app is set up and linked by QR code. Credit packs are €4.99, €9.99 and €24.99 and the World Unlimited plan is €5.99 a month as shown to a visitor in Europe; dollar prices aren’t on a public page. Calls are billed in whole minutes. The person you call sees your registered mobile number. The “from” prices on Viber’s country pages are the lowest rate across all its products — usually a monthly plan — not the credit rate: the live credit rate to the UK is about 15¢ a minute from a US number.
• Yolla is an iOS and Android app with a browser version, Yolla Web, that works in Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge for outbound calls on the same account. Credit starts at $4 with no connection fees, plus optional auto-renewing 30-day bundles. UK calls run from $0.06 a minute to landlines and $0.10 to mobiles, Mexico from $0.011, India from $0.0239. Yolla-to-Yolla calls are free.
• Rebtel sells per-country unlimited subscriptions (UK $6 per 30 days, Mexico $3 a month, India $14 per 30 days), minute buckets, or pay-as-you-go minutes: UK 2.38¢, Mexico 2.38¢ to mobiles and 1.19¢ to landlines, India 2.84¢. Its help center says it needs the mobile app on a phone with a SIM card and does not support calling from computers or tablets. Subscriptions auto-renew.
• Talk360 is pay-as-you-go only — no subscriptions, no monthly fee — and credit stays active as long as you call once every 12 months. UK $0.12 a minute, India $0.05, Nigeria $0.14, Mexico from $0.06. There is no Windows, Mac or web version.
• BOSS Revolution shows the per-minute rate when you enter a number and sells 30-day unlimited plans beside the balance (UK $2, Mexico $3, India $14). Pay-as-you-go: UK 2¢ to landlines and 5¢ to mobiles, Mexico 1.9¢, India 3.3¢. You don’t need the app — you can dial a US access number first from any phone, with a 1.5¢-a-minute surcharge on the toll-free ones — which makes it the one option here that works from a basic handset.

Browser dialers: pay-as-you-go without an app

ChromePing is our product, so read this knowing that. A browser dialer does the Skype Credit job in a tab: open the site in Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Edge on a desktop or a phone, sign up, add credit, type a number with its country code, and it rings the person’s ordinary phone with a real caller ID — a shared ChromePing US number by default, or a number you already own once you verify it. Nothing to install, no SIM, and no US number or US account needed. Other services sell the same shape — Yadaphone and Voxa are two — and their own pages are the place to check current rates and limits. Our pricing mechanics are below; the step-by-step, including the microphone prompt, is in how to call from a laptop without a phone rather than repeated here. If the person you call is on a landline, our guide to calling a landline from the internet compares five routes on caller ID, phone menus and cost.

Business phone systems: Teams Phone, Zoom Phone and friends

If you ran a small business on Skype, the successors are per-user phone systems. Microsoft Teams Phone is bought by an organization’s administrator on top of a Microsoft 365 or Teams business licence: Teams Phone Standard is $10 per user a month on annual billing, and the pay-as-you-go calling bundle is $13 ($12 in the UK and Canada), with every outgoing minute billed on top. Zoom Phone needs a Pro, Business or Enterprise Zoom account; its US & CA Unlimited plan is $16 per user a month billed annually or $18 monthly, with international calls metered, and Zoom’s site says metered plans start from $10. RingCentral, GoTo Connect and the rest follow the same per-user model. None of this is for one person calling a parent abroad.

Free app-to-app calls: WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, FaceTime, Teams Free

Free, good quality, and the wrong tool for the Skype Credit job. WhatsApp’s help pages describe voice calls as calling your WhatsApp contacts from a chat over your internet connection. No page documents a way to dial a landline or a number that isn’t on WhatsApp. The business calling Meta added in 2025 connects businesses with WhatsApp users — both ends inside the app. FaceTime can only reach someone signed in to FaceTime; Android and Windows users can join a FaceTime link in a browser but can’t be called. Signal and Telegram calls likewise connect users of the same app. Apple’s own apps reach a landline one way: a phone call placed from a Mac or iPad, which is your iPhone’s cellular call relayed from a nearby iPhone with a carrier plan and billed by your carrier. If everyone you call is on the same app, you never needed Skype Credit. If even one of them is on a landline, you still do.

If “free” is the point, free ad-supported calling sites exist too — PopTox, for example, caps calls to the same number at five a day and shows a shared caller ID — and they are compared in how to call from a laptop without a phone.

What each replacement needs from you

Rate tables are easy to find and go stale fast. The column nobody prints is what each service needs from you before it will place a call — and that decides whether it works for an ex-Skype user in Toronto, Lisbon or Manila.

A Google Voice alternative for international calls when you’re not in the US

Google Voice sits at the top of most “Skype alternative” lists, and anyone outside the US who tries it finds the personal plan won’t have them: Google’s plan page says the single-user plans are only available in the US, and the paid Workspace version covers 14 countries in North America and Europe on a business subscription. If you do qualify, the limits above still apply, and Google adds one for travellers: calling may not be available in the country you’re visiting. And no, it does not make international calls for free: free covers US and Canadian numbers from a US account, and everything else is per-minute credit.

What non-US ex-Skype users use instead splits by device. On a phone: the credit apps above — Viber Out if the people you call are already on Viber, Yolla or Talk360 for pure pay-as-you-go, Rebtel or BOSS Revolution if a per-country unlimited plan fits the one corridor you call constantly. On a computer: a browser dialer, because none of the credit apps except Yolla Web runs in a browser, and Yolla Web is outbound only. Canadian deal forums also trade notes on home-grown options — Fongo and a voip.ms account come up in those threads. A SIP account needs a separate app and some setup: a project, not a dial pad.

What ChromePing costs pay-as-you-go, and where the apps beat it on price

Here are the mechanics of ours. ChromePing bills one flat rate per destination country. The first minute is billed in full, then per second — no connection fee, no whole-minute rounding after the first minute. Pay with credit packs of $10, $50 or $100, or pick a monthly plan. Line at $4.99 includes 60 minutes a month to a list of low-rate countries (US, Canada, the UK, Mexico and more), with no dedicated number. Plus at $8.99 includes 120 minutes on the same list and 15 translation minutes, plus a dedicated number. Pro at $16.99 includes 250 minutes on that list, 20 translation minutes and $6 a month of credit that works for any country, plus a dedicated number. New accounts can claim 1 free minute by verifying a mobile number. The claim is a one-time SMS check of a non-VoIP mobile from any country, on the free-minute page.

The rates below are rendered from our pricing engine, not typed, so they match the live rate index on the day this page was built:

• US and Canada: 1.9¢/min
• Mexico: 5.0¢/min
• Colombia: 5.3¢/min
• United Kingdom: 5.9¢/min
• Japan: 8.3¢/min

We are not the cheapest route everywhere. To the UK, BOSS Revolution (2¢ to landlines, 5¢ to mobiles) and Rebtel (2.38¢) both undercut our 5.9¢/min; Yolla ($0.06 to landlines) is about level, and Viber Out credit (about 15¢ from a US number) and Talk360 ($0.12) sit above it. To Mexico, Viber Out, Yolla, Rebtel and BOSS Revolution are all under our 5.0¢/min; Talk360 is just above. India is a corridor where we are plainly not competitive: 9.9¢/min against roughly 2.4¢ to 5¢ at the five credit apps. And because our calls leave from a US number, EU destinations are not low-rate on this route: Spain is 101.3¢/min and Italy 63.8¢/min. Check the country you actually call on the rate index before you add credit; if it’s India or Spain, one of the apps above will likely serve you better on price. Live translation, when you switch it on, adds 10.0¢/min on top of the destination rate.

What none of these can do (read before you switch)

Skype quietly handled a few things its replacements don’t:

• Phone menus. ChromePing has no DTMF today: you can’t press digits in a “press 1 for English” menu, so lines that answer with a menu are a poor fit for us right now. Other services vary; test the line you need before relying on any of them.
• Emergency calls. ChromePing is not for emergency calls, and Google Voice says the same of personal accounts. Keep a mobile for that.
• Texts and verification codes. A voice-only number can’t receive SMS. ChromePing numbers are for voice calls only, Google’s Workspace Voice texting is US-only, and Skype’s own SMS ended in May 2025. Codes sent by text need a carrier number.
• Landlines from free apps. WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram and FaceTime reach other users of the same app. None rings a landline.
• Receiving calls without an open app or tab. Google Voice on a computer needs voice.google.com open; a ChromePing number rings only while a ChromePing tab is open, with no forwarding to a handset. Skype’s web portal had the same rule for Skype Numbers.
• Billing you didn’t expect. Whole-minute rounding (Viber Out, Google Voice); credit that expires (Google six months after last use, Talk360 after twelve months without a call) or goes dormant (Skype after 180 days, though it can be reactivated); and auto-renewing subscriptions (Rebtel, Viber plans, Yolla bundles). Read the billing page before the rate page.

Receiving calls and translated calls: the two Skype features with the fewest replacements

Your Skype Number. It is gone and cannot be ported, so the job becomes getting a new number that rings where you are. ChromePing rents US and Canada numbers for $2.99 a month from your credit. Calls to it ring in any open ChromePing tab, and it can show as your caller ID on calls out. It is voice calls only, it rings only while a tab is open with no forwarding to a phone, and it can’t take your old Skype Number in. Incoming calls don’t spend per-minute credit; the $2.99 covers the number. The five ways to get a number, including the ones that do texts, are compared in how to get a virtual phone number.

Skype Translator. This is the part of Skype that ChromePing set out to carry forward, and the one the classic credit-calling services don’t offer. A ChromePing call you place can translate itself live, in both directions, on a real phone call: you speak your language, the person on the ordinary phone hears theirs, and live captions run in your browser while you talk. It adds 10.0¢/min on top of the destination rate, the captions are live only (no transcript afterwards), and the “Their voice + captions” option keeps their real voice in your ear with captions underneath, which is the setting to pick if they tend to switch into your language. It works across a growing set of major languages, including Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Dutch and Hungarian. If that was your Skype habit, the full picture of how ChromePing replaces each part of Skype is on its own page, including the parts it doesn’t.

How to call abroad without Skype: five steps

Whichever replacement you pick, moving off Skype comes down to the same five steps. The fifth is the one that gets skipped.

1. Check what’s left in Skype before you leave. Sign in to the Skype web portal or Teams Free and look at the Dial Pad. Leftover Skype Credit still works for calls to landlines and mobiles, so spend it down; if your credit went inactive after 180 days without use, reactivate it first. A Skype Number is gone for good — port-outs closed in May 2026 — so tell regular callers your new number once you have one.
2. Sort the people you call into landlines and app users. Anyone on WhatsApp, Signal or FaceTime can be called free, app to app. Anyone on a landline, a basic mobile or a business line needs a service that places real phone calls. Most ex-Skype users have both groups.
3. Decide where you’ll call from. From a computer, you need a browser-based service or a desktop app, and most credit apps are phone-first. From a phone, the field is wide open. If you’re outside the US, cross off Google Voice’s personal plan before you start.
4. Choose pay-as-you-go or a subscription, and read the billing rules. Check whether calls are billed per second or rounded up to whole minutes, whether credit expires, whether a plan auto-renews, and what the per-minute rate is to the one country you call most. A headline price on a country page is often the plan price, not the credit rate.
5. Make one test call and ask what they saw. Call the number you ring most often and ask what caller ID appeared. A shared service number, a withheld number or your own verified number changes whether people call you back.

Which replacement fits you?

There is no single best app for international calls after Skype. It depends on three things: where you call from, whether the other person is on a landline, and whether you want credit or a plan.

• In the US, with a US mobile and a Gmail account? Google Voice. Free to US and Canadian numbers, per-minute credit abroad, and it runs in a browser.
• Mobile-first, and the people you call are already on Viber? Viber Out. Your own mobile number shows as caller ID; mind the whole-minute billing.
• One corridor you call constantly, from a phone? A per-country unlimited plan from Rebtel or BOSS Revolution, if the country is on their list — and a reminder about the auto-renewal.
• Calling from a desktop, pay-as-you-go, outside the US? A browser dialer. Ours is one; compare the rate to your country against the apps above first, especially for India and the EU.
• Ran a team on Skype? Teams Phone or Zoom Phone, priced per user, with calling plans on top.
• Need texts or verification codes? A carrier line or an eSIM, not any of the above.
• Miss Skype Translator? That one has the shortest list. Ours does it from a browser tab, whatever phone the other person has: ChromePing’s live call translation.

No single service is the new Skype. Run the four filters — app, US requirement, landlines, pay-as-you-go — against the people you actually call, and the right replacement is usually obvious.