Zadarma

Overview

Zadarma is one of the oldest still-running VoIP and virtual-number providers on the market — roughly 19 years of continuous operation, more than 2 million registered users across 160 countries, and 30,000+ phone numbers in 110 countries. Its product stack is mature: virtual numbers with SMS reception, cloud PBX with IVR, call recording, speech-to-text, SIP trunking, an open API, and prices that start at roughly $2 / month per number. As a business it is exactly what its 2-decade reputation suggests — reliable, technically deep, and not a scam.

It is also completely unsuited for a no-KYC workflow, and this directory lists it specifically so that fact is documented clearly, with sources, instead of being absorbed by repeated user questions.

Privacy & KYC — the disqualifying part

Zadarma sits at the bottom tier of this directory’s privacy ladder: KYC Tier L5 — Mandatory. Number activation is gated behind a full identity package, drawn directly from Zadarma’s own support documentation:

• A copy of a passport or national ID card
• A registration certificate (for business accounts)
• An address-confirmation document — usually a utility bill
• A photograph of the user holding the passport — a face-with-document selfie, the same biometric pattern KYC vendors use to bind a face to an ID

For SMS reception specifically — the use case that brought most readers to this page — the requirement is reinforced: the passport / ID scan is mandatory and the account must pre-pay three months of service before SMS becomes active. Until verification clears (anywhere from a few minutes to a full working day), the number is unable to send or receive anything.

This is not a soft tier of identity collection. It is a complete identity bundle — government document, biometric face match, real-world address — held custodially alongside call and message logs. For a user whose goal is to avoid linking a phone number to a legal identity, the entire premise of the service is the opposite of what is needed.

Why the trust score is still high

The trust score of 75 / 100 may look incongruous next to the overall score of 3.5 / 10. It is intentional. This directory separates privacy from trustworthiness:

• The service has been running since approximately 2006, surviving the entire VoIP-vendor consolidation cycle
• The user base is large and verifiable, and reviews on Capterra, Software Suggest and similar platforms are consistent over many years
• The platform behaves as advertised — numbers work, calls connect, the PBX features are real, and pricing is transparent
• There is no public history of fund misappropriation, sudden account closures without recourse, or undocumented service changes

If you decide you can accept the KYC trade-off — for a regulated business PBX, an international contact number for support staff, a sales-ops setup — Zadarma is not the wrong choice. It earns its high trust rating for exactly that audience. The overall score is held at 3.5 / 10 because the only axis that matters in this directory — operating without surrendering identity — is the one Zadarma has chosen, explicitly and in writing, not to support.

Pricing

• Virtual numbers: from $2 / month; New York US number around $4 / month; US 800 toll-free around $6 / month
• Standard call plan: 100 free monthly minutes to 5 popular destinations; incoming calls on most numbers are free
• Office plan: around $22 / month
• Corporation plan: around $44 / month
• Payment rails: fiat only — card, PayPal and wire. No crypto support documented.

Verdict

Zadarma is listed, not recommended. It is here as a documented counter-example so that visitors searching for it find a sourced, honest assessment instead of a circular reference loop, and so that users who already use Zadarma understand exactly what they have signed up for on the privacy axis. If your threat model tolerates a passport scan plus a selfie binding your face to that passport plus an address proof, in exchange for a battle-tested VoIP stack, Zadarma is a sensible business-grade choice. If your threat model is the one this directory is built for, browse the SMS category filtered by KYC Tier L0 / L1 and pay in crypto for a shorter-lived but identity-free number instead.