Funny Phone Numbers to Call When Bored: Songs, Pep Talks and Talking Clocks

Funny phone numbers to call: every line at a glance

Most of these funny phone numbers to call play a recording, not a person. Two are different: students sing the carol line live, in December only, and one 2020 article says the hold line joins callers to a group call. We place no test calls. Every date comes from someone else's newest dated report.

If a person ever answers, the number has changed hands: apologise and hang up.

Phone numbers that play music

Some funny phone numbers to call play a whole song instead of a message.

The Rickroll line: 248-434-5508. This line plays Rick Astley's 1987 hit "Never Gonna Give You Up". Radio station 99.1 WFMK wrote it up as a Rickroll hotline on 30 September 2026. YouTuber Mark Rober shared it in 2018. The prank is older: Rickrolling began on 15 May 2007, when a 4chan user posted the video on YouTube (Wikipedia). No operator is named, so the owner is unknown, which is why we list it but do not suggest calling it.

Callin' Oates: 719-266-2837. The number spells 719-26-OATES. A recorded menu lets the caller pick a Hall & Oates hit. It began in 2011 as a demo at the phone company Twilio, NPR reported. Its makers also built lines for Phil Collins, Bob Dylan and Neil Diamond songs. None has a recent report.

867-5309: the song number to leave alone. Tommy Tutone's song "867-5309/Jenny" came out in 1981. People who own that number still get calls asking for Jenny, Spin reported in 2017. In most area codes it reaches a real home or business. One version, 272-867-5309, is now the Cancer Support Community helpline (Business Wire). Do not dial either for fun.

Funny numbers for kids and bad days

These funny phone numbers to call come from a school project, a dental insurer, a radio station and a phone company. Only Peptoc has a caller report from the last 12 months.

Peptoc: 707-873-7862. Students at West Side Elementary in Healdsburg, California, recorded it in 2022. A menu offers pep talks, life advice, kids laughing and a Spanish option. It had taken over 25 million calls by December 2025, USA Today reported. Peptoc's site lists the same number. You can call it.

Santa's Hotline. FreeConferenceCall runs it. Its Santa page lists 605-313-0691 as the main number, 605-313-4000 in English and 605-313-4001 in Spanish, and says the line is open all year. Most lists still print 951-262-3062, a number Newsweek tied to the company in 2020. The company's page no longer shows it.

The Tooth Fairy Hotline: 1-833-324-7992. Delta Dental of Washington runs this free line. Kids pick one of four recorded messages (Delta Dental).

The Sesame Street line: 626-831-9333. Southern California public radio station KPCC set it up in April 2020. Oscar the Grouch, Grover and Louie, Elmo's dad, gave tips on staying apart (Scary Mommy). Some lists say Elmo answers. We found no report after 2020.

TV, film and game lines

Fan lines reward the caller with an in-joke. Studios set up some of these funny phone numbers to call, and fans run the rest.

The Mario line: 929-556-2746. It first ran in a 2023 Super Bowl ad for The Super Mario Bros. Movie, with a voicemail from Luigi. In March 2026 it came back for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Nintendo Everything reported. That spring it was reported to text callers about "Gateway Galaxy" with a picture of R.O.B. You can try it, but expect a text back.

Better Call Saul: 505-503-4455. The show's account posted it as Saul Goodman's number in 2020. A second number, 505-842-5662, is linked to the show by one secondary source (NumberBarn, 2025). Some lists call it a 2014 billboard line, but we found no report that ties it to a billboard.

The Hogwarts Hotline: 781-452-4077 and 267-436-5109. Both look fan-run rather than official. The 781 line plays a Hogwarts menu and was reported in September 2025 (Kids Activities Blog). An undated Instagram post calls the 267 line a popular novelty hotline.

Stranger Things and God of War. Murray Bauman's voicemail (618-625-8313) and Surfer Boy Pizza (805-45-PIZZA, or 805-457-4992) came from Netflix campaigns for Stranger Things. IMDb trivia says the first God of War game (2005) hid 888-447-5594 as an extra, but a 2022 Reddit post said the number did not exist. The newest list we found that says Murray's voicemail works was updated in 2024. Reports on Surfer Boy clash, and we have no dated report that it still answers. Dead lines can be reassigned.

Numbers to call when bored: weird recordings and test lines

Not all funny phone numbers to call tell a joke. These are checking lines and odd recordings that people noticed and wrote about, for anyone who likes strange better than spooky. The oddities are documented, but some of the newest reports date from 2016 and 2020.

The echo line: 909-390-0003. A VoIP.ms forum post from June 2024 lists it as an echo test number, a kind of line that lets you judge delay. "Talk to your double" is a story told about echo lines. We found no owner and no recent call report. Our 909-390-0003 echo line page has more.

The Infotel test line: 804-222-1111. Infotel Systems runs this test line. It speaks your caller ID back to you, plays a 1000 Hz tone for up to 60 seconds, runs a touch-tone test and checks echo and delay. The owner says it has handled over 100 million calls in 30 years, and it does not allow automated calls.

The CPTA announcement test: 914-737-9938. Tedium says this Westchester County, New York number plays a voice that calls itself a "CPTA announcement test". It says it does not know what it should say, and that you should disregard it and hang up. Ernie Smith listed it in his 2016 Tedium article. His source, the Moo.net list of phone oddities, no longer loads, and we found nothing newer.

The too-fast error message: 845-354-9912. Tedium describes it as the usual "call cannot be completed as dialled" message, but about 25 percent faster than normal and fading in and out. It listed the line in 2016, from the same Moo.net list.

Deliberately bad hold music: 858-924-0180. A San Diego number tells you that you are caller number five and it will be just a moment. Then a deliberately bad cover of Britney Spears' "Toxic" plays. KFI and iHeart wrote it up in July 2020 and said that callers who get through are reportedly joined to a conference call with others who dialled. That is one article, so treat the group call as a report. You would reportedly be on a line with strangers.

Real phone numbers to call: talking clocks

Yes, there is a number that tells you the time, and a talking clock is one of the calmest numbers to call when bored. The US Navy, NIST and Canada's National Research Council each run phone lines that speak it, and each lists its numbers on its own page. These are public services, not novelty lines.

NIST: 303-499-7111. NIST's page, updated in June 2026, lists this Colorado number for WWV time audio. It also lists four Hawaii numbers for WWVH, such as 808-335-4363. Calls are cut off after 2 minutes. The numbers are not toll-free, so your carrier may charge for the call. NIST says the service takes about 1,000 calls a day. You can call either line.

Canada's talking clock: 613-745-1576. The National Research Council announces Eastern Time every ten seconds, then sounds a tone. After three announcements it hangs up. NRC's page was modified in September 2026, and a May 2026 ARRL Newsline report says the clock stays on after the CHU shortwave station closes. It is an Ottawa number, so a call from outside North America is international.

The Navy talking clock: 202-762-1401. The US Naval Observatory's Telephone Time page lists two voice announcers in Washington, this one and 202-762-1069, and one in Colorado Springs, 719-567-6742. The same undated page covers all three. The voice gives local time on the minute and at 15, 30 and 45 seconds after it, then UTC five seconds after each local time. The Navy warns that time may be delayed on long-distance calls. The line took more than three million calls in 2015, according to AARP in 2017. The Navy page carries no date, so we have no recent report.

Poems, carols and the first recorded lines

Recorded lines are older than the internet. The poet John Giorno set up Dial-A-Poem in 1968, and New Yorkers first heard it in January 1969. The Rejection Hotline idea came in 2001, by its creator's account, then Rickrolling online in 2007, Callin' Oates in 2011 and Peptoc in 2022.

Dial-A-Poem: 917-994-8949. Its owner, Giorno Poetry Systems, brought it back in 2026 with old and new recordings. SPIN reported the revival in January, and Boing Boing's article of 2026-02-01 says its writer called and heard David Henderson read part of "Ruckus Poem", recorded in December 1968. You can call it; normal call charges apply.

Dial-A-Carol: 217-332-1882. At the University of Illinois, student volunteers sing requested holiday songs 24 hours a day for one week a year. The 2025 run was December 11 to 17, and the university lists it as free. The 2026 dates are not yet published, so do not expect an answer before December.

Real phone numbers to call with friends

In our view, the best funny phone numbers to call with friends play recordings. A recording is easier to share than a conversation. Put the phone on speaker and let the room listen: Dial-A-Poem, Peptoc and NIST's WWV line all play recordings. These are our suggestions, not the owners' advice. Skip the hold line for a group: if the reported conference call is real, your friends would be on a line with strangers.

A rejection line plays a polite "no" to whoever calls, so you can hand it out instead of your own number. The rejection hotline number and other brush-off lines have their own page.

Numbers other lists print that we left out

Roundups of funny phone numbers to call copy each other, so a dead number can travel for years. These are lines the big lists print that we left out, and why.

• The Harvard sentences line: 858-651-5050. It read out the Harvard sentences, short phrases published by the IEEE in 1969 to test how clear speech sounds over a phone. A Ghost in My Machine list says it was no longer in service as of January 2023, yet several top lists still print it as live.
• Just Scream: 1-561-567-8431. Artist Chris Gollmar's project let anyone call and scream into a shared archive. Callers left over 150,000 recordings, and the line closed on 2021-01-21 (NPR). The recordings stay online at justscream.baby.
• The Humor Hotlines family. Humor Hotlines, run by RH Brands in Atlanta, had over 100 joke hotlines by 2010. RH Brands says it has sold more than 2,500 of its numbers, yet five lists we read in October 2026 still print them.
• Peptoc's first number. One 2026 list calls it a "Dial-a-Prayer" line. It was the first number of Peptoc (KTVU, March 2022), and it may now belong to someone else.
• A "Don't Look Up" warning line. It is sold as a Netflix tie-in for the 2021 film. We found no Netflix source. The number shown in the film itself reached an adult chat line, NBC Bay Area reported in 2022.
• "Outsource your friendship to India". The gag began with a joke-line company in 2011, on a different number. Sites now disagree on whether a man or a voicemail answers.
• A psychic line, a "time travel" voicemail, "joke of the day", "Chuck Norris facts", a "bad connection" line, a second Santa number and a Krusty Krab number. We found no owner and no dated report for any, and no official SpongeBob line, so we print none.

Before you call: keep it a joke

Funny phone numbers to call are made for one laugh. They cost what your plan charges, and a few are long distance or international. None here is a premium 900 number.

• Stick to recordings. Never ring random numbers to prank strangers. The law on calling random numbers is on its own page.
• Call once. One call to a recording is fine. Calling a real person over and over is not a joke to them.
• Never use 911 or a help line as a dare. Those lines are for people in trouble.
• Leave scammers alone. Calling back an unknown number can cost you; our never-call list explains which numbers cost money or ring the wrong person.
• Hiding your number: you can hide your number before you call if you prefer.