Truecaller API: Searching 600M Phone #'s

Users of Truecaller can share their contacts and in return get access to the collaborative database of names and numbers. It is this unique data that Truecaller now has made available via their API.

A guest post by Truecaller, the world’s largest collaborative phone directory

The Truecaller API, powered by 3scale, makes it easy to connect a name to a phone number. This has previously not been a trivial problem – pre-paid phones and carriers unwilling or unable to share data are just some of the problems. Truecaller has solved this problem by crowd-sourcing. Users of Truecaller can share their contacts and in return get access to the collaborative database of names and numbers. It is this unique data that Truecaller now has made available via their API. The API makes it possible to search among over 600 million phone numbers worldwide.

The Modern Collaborative Phone Directory
Being able to attach a name to a phone number is very valuable. This is especially true in parts of the world that has not previously had a national phone directory for whatever reason, for example due to the popularity of pre-paid phones. Since the data is continuously being updated by the Truecaller community, the API is kept up to date and keep returning the latest and greatest information.

Reverse Number Lookup
The basic functionality of the API is to send in a phone number and get back some data about that phone number. The data Truecaller delivers are:

• Name – the name of the person attached to the phone number

• True score – indicating how popular the number is within the Truecaller phone number directory

• Spam score – indicating how likely the number is related to spam, i.e. telesales or robocalls

The Truecaller directory is built by the Truecaller community of users and those users who don’t like to be spammed with sales calls or automated messages. To avoid that, Truecaller’s data is used for these purposes, and it has opted not to make it possible to search for a persons number based on the persons name.

Get Started
Read more about the API at dev.truecaller.com. Get started with the Truecaller today by testing out the free option or request an account to get access to the full power of the API.