Your phone company: AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile

This is the layer that works before the call reaches your phone. All three companies give it to you free. You don't need the paid version to start, and this page tells you what the paid version costs anyway, so nobody can sell you one twice.

Find your company below. The words in bold are exactly what's on the screen.

Checked in October 2026 against each company's own pages. Phone companies rename and re-price these services often. Treat the names and prices here as right on that date, and trust your own bill over this page.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile's free service is called ScamShield. It does two jobs, and they are not the same job.

Scam ID puts a label on a suspect call. It's already on. You don't have to do a thing.

Scam Block stops the call instead. That one is off until you turn it on.

The easy way to turn on Scam Block

1. Open the Phone app, like you're making a call.
2. Dial #662#.
3. Press the call button.

That's the whole thing. No app to install. No password to remember. It works the same way on a prepaid plan.

What it costs you. Here's T-Mobile's own warning, word for word: turning on Scam Block "might block calls you want; disable any time." A blocked call doesn't ring. It doesn't leave a voicemail either. You won't know it came.

T-Mobile says you can switch it off any time. If you want it off and you're not sure how, call T-Mobile and ask them to walk you through it.

The paid tier is ScamShield Premium, at $4 per line each month. The free part above is the part that matters. Start there.

AT&T

AT&T's free service is called ActiveArmor, and you get it in the free AT&T ActiveArmor app.

Two halves of it are set up differently, which is what trips people up.

• Fraud calls are already set to block. AT&T does that for you.
• Spam calls are yours to set. Nothing happens until you choose.

To choose, open the app and go to the Calls & Texts tab. That's where you say what a spam call should do.

The warning to read twice

This is AT&T's own, word for word: "You must have an active voice mailbox to send callers to voicemail. If you don't, calls from numbers that aren't on your contact list won't go through."

Read it again, because of what it means in your house. If you send spam calls to voicemail, and you never set up a voicemail box, those calls just die. There is no missed call. There is no message. Nobody tells you.

Plenty of people have never set up voicemail. If that's you, either set one up or don't pick the voicemail option.

What it costs you. AT&T says plainly that its service "may not detect all threats and may inadvertently block wanted calls." That's the company's own sentence about its own product, and it's the honest one.

The paid tier is AT&T ActiveArmor advanced, at $7 per month for each line. It was $3.99 until February 2026, so an older article may quote you the old price. One more thing worth knowing: at AT&T, caller ID is part of the paid tier, not the free one.

Verizon

Verizon's free service is called Call Filter. On most Android phones it's already there. If it isn't, it's free from the app store.

Verizon is changing the name to Verizon Protect. They haven't said when. So if the name on your screen isn't the name on this page, that's why, and nothing is wrong.

High-risk spam is sent to voicemail already, unless you go in and change that.

The one that catches people

Deleting the app does not turn the filtering off.

That sounds like a small thing and it isn't. People delete the app, think they're done, and then wonder why a call never arrived. If you want the filtering stopped, turn it off in the settings first. Pulling the app off your phone leaves it running.

What it costs you. Verizon's own words: "Verizon doesn't guarantee that all spam calls will be detected." And what gets filtered goes to voicemail without ringing.

The paid tier is Call Filter Plus, at $3.99 a month for one line, or $10.99 a month for three lines or more.

The one cost all three share

Each company blocks some calls before your phone ever rings. Each one will get a call wrong sooner or later, and all three say so in their own words above.

There's a difference here worth holding on to. The settings on your own phone let anyone in your contacts ring through. This layer sits at the phone company instead, up the line from your phone, so your contact list may not save a call from being blocked here.

That's the trade. We'd still take it. Fewer calls means fewer chances to be caught on a bad day.

Turn on your phone's own settings too, and put the numbers you need into your contacts: the doctor, the pharmacy, the bank, your family.

Back to the series. Your phone company can thin out the calls. It can't tell you the person on the line is lying, so read how the call goes as well.