How to format a phone number to E.164
Convert a local or messy phone number into clean E.164 for APIs. Step-by-step, plus a free validator that outputs E.164.
Most SMS and verification APIs — including ours — require phone numbers in E.164: a plus sign, the country code, and the national number, with no spaces or punctuation. Here is how to normalize any number into that form.
The normalization rules
Start from the country. Drop the international dialing prefix (00 or 011) if present, and remove the national trunk prefix (often a leading 0). Prepend + and the country calling code, then the remaining national digits. Strip all spaces, dashes, and parentheses. The result is E.164.
Let a validator do it
Edge cases — variable-length numbers, ambiguous prefixes — make manual formatting error-prone. Our phone validator normalizes any input (with a country hint for local formats) and outputs the canonical E.164 string you can copy straight into an API.
Step by step
Identify the country (or provide it as a hint for a local-format number).
Remove the international prefix (00/011) and the national trunk zero.
Prepend + and the country calling code, then the national number.
Strip spaces, dashes and parentheses — or just paste it into the validator and copy the E.164 output.
Try it now — free, no signup
Use the phone validator in your browser. Then, when you need it at scale with an API key and higher limits, grab the full Eveses API.