Peru Country Code +51: Dialing Lima, Cusco, and Everywhere Between

If you are trying to reach a family member in Lima, confirm a tour booking in Cusco, or walk a client in Arequipa through a contract on a Wednesday afternoon, the single most important thing to know is that the Peru country code is +51. Everything else about calling Peru from the United States flows from that number. Area codes, trunk prefixes, mobile formats, the quirks of calling from a US cell plan versus a laptop in a cafe. It all sits on top of +51.

I write a lot of these guides, and Peru is one of the cleaner numbering plans in Latin America. Once you understand the two patterns, landline with an area code and mobile that starts with a 9, you will not look up dialing instructions again. The rest of this article is the context around those two patterns: which area code belongs to which region, which digits to drop when you call from abroad, who to dial in a real emergency, and how to keep the cost of a long conversation with your mother in San Juan de Lurigancho from quietly swallowing a weekend budget.

The short version

To call any number in Peru from the United States, dial:

The 011 is the US international access code, your way out of the North American Numbering Plan. The 51 is Peru. Everything after that is the Peruvian number as it would appear on a business card in Miraflores, minus the leading 0 that Peruvians add when they dial a landline in another region.

If you are calling from a browser-based service like Phonecall, you skip the 011 and type +51 followed by the number. The plus sign does the same job as 011 from any country, which is useful if you move around or if you are helping a parent who keeps a US SIM but travels.

Why +51 and not something else

Country codes were assigned by the ITU starting in the 1960s and are grouped roughly by world zone; the ITU's list of E.164 country codes is the official record. Zone 5 covers Mexico, Central America and South America, which is why Peru (51), Mexico (52), Argentina (54), Brazil (55), and Chile (56) all cluster together. If you ever misdial +52 trying to reach Lima and end up with a confused voice in Mexico City, now you know why. One digit off and you have changed countries.

Peru's telecom regulator is OSIPTEL, and the numbering plan it oversees has one quirk worth knowing: landline numbers vary in length by region while mobile numbers are uniform. Lima has seven-digit local numbers after the area code. Other regions have six. Mobiles are always nine digits. We will get to the specifics.

Peru area codes, by city and region

Landline numbers in Peru are tied to a geographic area code. Lima and Callao share the single-digit code 1, which reflects how much of the country's telephone traffic lives there. Everywhere else uses a two-digit code. The common ones that will come up for most US callers are below; the full breakdown of Peruvian numbering covers every department.

Yes, Puno really is 51, which happens to match the country code. It is a coincidence, not a problem. When you dial a Puno landline from the US you type 011 51 51 and then the number, and the network parses it correctly.

A note on the leading zero. If a Peruvian friend sends you a landline as 084 123 456, that leading 0 is the domestic trunk prefix. Drop it when you call from abroad. The international version of that number is +51 84 123 456. Keeping the 0 will not route your call. This is the single most common mistake US callers make when a cousin dictates a hotel number over WhatsApp.

Mobile numbers: always 9, always nine digits

Since the late 2000s, every mobile number in Peru has been nine digits long and starts with the digit 9. The area code concept does not apply to mobile. A phone registered in Cusco and a phone registered in Lima both begin with 9, and both are reached the same way from abroad.

So if your sister in Trujillo texts you her number as 987 654 321, you dial 011 51 987 654 321 from a US landline or carrier phone, or +51 987 654 321 from Phonecall or any VoIP client. There is no area code to insert. There is no 0 to drop. The 9 at the front is already baked in and must stay.

This uniformity is a real quality-of-life improvement over, say, Mexico, where mobile dialing rules have shifted several times. Peru's mobile format has been stable for well over a decade and is forgiving.

How to actually dial, step by step

From a US mobile phone or landline:

1. Dial 011 to leave the North American Numbering Plan.
2. Dial 51 for Peru.
3. Dial the area code if the number is a landline, or go straight to the 9 if it is a mobile.
4. Dial the local number.

From Phonecall in your browser:

1. Open the dialer and sign in.
2. Type +51 followed by the number, no spaces required.
3. Press call. The per-minute rate is shown before the call connects.

From a US iPhone or Android dialer, you can also tap and hold the 0 key to produce a + symbol and then dial +51 directly. The plus is universal and works whether you are at home in New Jersey or waiting out a layover in Panama City.

The cost of a 20-minute call

A lot of US callers assume international calls still work the way they did in 1998, when AT&T charged by the minute and the bill arrived with a thump. In practice there are now three price tiers for calling Peru.

Your US mobile carrier, if you dial +51 directly without an international plan, will typically charge somewhere between $1 and $4 per minute to a Peruvian mobile. A 20-minute call to your abuela can become a $40 line item on next month's bill. You will not see the charge until the statement arrives.

An international add-on plan from Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile usually brings this down to the 20 to 50 cents per minute range, in exchange for a monthly fee you may or may not use. If you call Peru twice a year, the fixed fee eats the savings.

Phonecall charges $0.15 per minute to Peruvian mobiles and $0.11 per minute to landlines, billed per second, with no monthly fee and no connection charge. A 20-minute call to a mobile comes to $3.00; the same call to a Lima landline is $2.20. Both rates are on the rates page. There is no roaming surcharge because you are calling from your browser, not from a cellular network. New accounts get 30 seconds of free call time to test the audio quality before paying for anything.

Set against a typical US carrier bill, that is a small fraction of the price for the same conversation. That math is why so many of the Peruvian families I have talked to in Paterson, Miami, and Los Angeles stopped using carrier minutes for family calls years ago.

Try a call to Peru with 30 seconds free

For travelers heading to Peru

If you are the one going to Peru, not the one left behind, the direction of calling reverses but the country code does not. From a Peruvian landline, the international exit code is 00, so a US number is 00 1 followed by the ten digits. From a mobile, or from an app on hotel WiFi, use the simple +1 + US number.

Travelers on an eSIM or local SIM will find Peruvian mobile data easy to buy in the cities. A browser-based calling service on top of that data plan is the simplest setup: you keep your US number for texts and verification codes, use the local eSIM for data, and route voice calls through Phonecall. Calls to any Peruvian mobile cost $0.15 a minute and calls back home to the US cost $0.03 a minute, regardless of which Peruvian city or lodge you happen to be sitting in. No roaming trap. For entry rules and safety notes before you fly, the US State Department keeps a Peru country information page, and the official tourism board's Peru.travel covers the fun part.

A quick safety note for the Sacred Valley and the Amazon basin: cell coverage drops out quickly past the main tourist arteries. If you are heading to Choquequirao or into the Manu reserve, assume you will have no signal and plan check-ins for when you are back in town.

Emergency numbers in Peru

If you are in Peru and need help, the numbers you dial are not 911. Memorize these before you land.

• 105 reaches the Policía Nacional del Perú (PNP). This is your general police line for crimes, accidents, and anything that needs an officer on scene.
• 106 reaches SAMU, the public ambulance service, for medical emergencies.
• 116 reaches the fire service (Bomberos), which also handles rescue operations.

You may see 911 listed in some older documents or international travel sites. It is not Peru's emergency number, so do not count on it. Use 105, 106, or 116.

Hotels, hostels, and tour operators will know these by heart. If you are traveling with children or anyone with a chronic condition, write the numbers on a piece of paper and tuck it in a wallet. Phone batteries die at inconvenient moments.

Time zone: when to call without waking anyone

Peru runs on PET, Peru Time, which is UTC-5. Peru does not observe daylight saving time, which means the offset relative to the US East Coast changes twice a year.

• From early November through mid-March, while the East Coast is on standard time, Peru and New York share the same hour. Noon in Lima is noon in New York.
• From mid-March through early November, while the East Coast is on daylight time, Peru is one hour behind. Noon in Lima is 1 p.m. in New York.
• Peru is two hours ahead of the US Pacific Coast in summer and three hours ahead in winter.

For most of the Peruvian community in the US Northeast, this means you can call home during a lunch break without doing mental arithmetic. For callers in California, early mornings are the safest window.

Troubleshooting a Peru call that will not connect

Most failed calls to Peru come down to one of five issues. Walk through them in order.

You left the trunk 0 in place. A Peruvian friend wrote the number as 084 123 456 and you dialed 011 51 084 123 456. Drop the 0 after the country code. The correct dial is 011 51 84 123 456.

You used a mobile format for a landline, or vice versa. Mobiles always start with 9 and are always nine digits long. Landlines carry a geographic area code in front of a six- or seven-digit local number. If the number you were given is seven digits on its own, it is most likely a Lima landline and needs the 1 area code in front.

Your carrier blocks international calls by default. US prepaid plans in particular often disable international dialing until you explicitly turn it on in the account dashboard. This is why calls fail silently with no error. Check your plan, or sidestep the issue by calling from Phonecall in a browser.

You dialed from a calling app that does not support Peru. Some free apps restrict their outbound routing to a short list of countries. Phonecall covers 218 countries, so if you can type the number, you can place the call.

The recipient's phone is off or out of coverage. Rural Peru still has large dead zones. If the call rings and rings without going to voicemail, the handset is probably somewhere without signal rather than being ignored.

Where Peru's numbering plan sits in the region

If you make calls across South America, it helps to know that Peru's neighbors share conventions but not country codes. Chile is +56, Colombia is +57, Ecuador is +593, Bolivia is +591, Argentina is +54. Spain, which many Peruvian families have ties to, is +34. The United States, where most of this guide's readers live, is +1. Phonecall's mobile rate to Peru, $0.15 a minute, slots in between its Chile rate of $0.09 and its Bolivia rate of $0.62, which is a function of carrier termination costs in each country rather than anything about the destination itself.

Ready to call Peru

If you are a Peruvian in the US with a mother waiting for a Sunday call, a traveler who just landed at Jorge Chávez, or a US business keeping tabs on a supplier in Chiclayo, the setup is the same. Sign up in your browser, type +51 and the number, and talk. Thirty seconds of call time are on the house so you can hear the line quality before you spend a cent. After that it is $0.15 a minute to mobiles and $0.11 to landlines, billed by the second, with no connection fee and no monthly commitment.

Peru is one dial code away. The rest is just hearing voices you miss.