Hold, park, port or let go: what to do with the number you are leaving
What happens to a phone number when you move abroad: hold it, park it, port it or let it go, and which of the four keeps bank codes arriving.
Checked against official pages on September 22, 2026. Rules move; when this one does, it goes on the changelog.
You are leaving. What to do with your phone number when moving abroad follows what still has to text it. Hold is the path that keeps messages arriving. Park, port, and letting the number go are the other three, and the country pages name what each path allows.
Four things can happen to a number when you leave the country it belongs to. A bank can reach it only while the line can still receive a message.
Start with what still needs the number
| What still has to reach it | The path that can work | The path that cannot |
|---|---|---|
| A bank, tax authority, payroll system or government portal sends a code | Hold: a genuinely live line that can receive | A suspension, or a parking service that does not count receiving as activity |
| People still call or text this number | Hold, or port to a carrier that keeps it live | Letting it go |
| Nothing important reaches it | Let go, or park it if you may come back | Paying for a live plan you do not need |
The four, in one line each
Hold means keeping the line alive on the network it is already on, paying whatever the cheapest plan costs. The number stays fully functional: calls arrive, messages arrive, codes arrive.
Park means moving the number to a service whose whole purpose is to keep numbers rather than to carry calls, and leaving it there. Cheap, sometimes free, and it changes who is responsible for the number's survival.
Port means moving the number to a different carrier, which is what parking usually involves under the hood: the number leaves the old network and lands on a new one, and whoever receives it sets the terms.
Let go means canceling and accepting that the number will eventually belong to someone else. Nothing gets paid, and nothing can be brought back.
The question that decides it
Not "how much can I save", but what still needs to reach this number. If a bank, a tax authority, a payroll system or a government portal sends codes to it, then the number has to be able to receive a message the day that code is sent, which rules out anything that suspends messaging and rules in anything that keeps the line genuinely live.
The cost of the wrong choice is not the subscription. It is being locked out of an account from another country, which is why bank OTP abroad is the companion page to this one rather than a separate subject.
Three kinds of clock behind every country
The mechanics differ enough between countries that the same choice has different prices and different risks. What changes is which of three clocks is running. The country pages carry the detail; the all carriers table carries every verified figure with its date.
| The clock | What starts it | Where we have read it |
|---|---|---|
| A regulator sets a floor | A rule that stops deactivation for non-usage, or requires a grace period | India's TRAI regulations, in the sources below |
| The carrier's own published rule sets the clock | A term in the carrier's terms, help article or product page: inactivity, a hold fee, a reconnection window | T-Mobile's support page, in the sources below |
| A parking service runs an activity test | The service's own rule for what counts as using the number | Google Voice's policy, in the sources below |
Those are different machines. A regulator's floor is the baseline; a carrier's own rule can be stricter, or can leave part of the floor out; a parking service belongs to a different category. The same four choices therefore produce different dates in different countries, and the date has to come from the document rather than from a general rule.
The two traps
A suspended line cannot receive codes. On T-Mobile, suspending a line stops "all calls, text messages, voicemail, and data services", per its support page, while the full monthly plan charge continues. Paying full price for a line that cannot receive the message you are keeping it for is the worst of both.
A parked number can be reclaimed for not being used. Google Voice's policy says the company "may reclaim your Google Voice number (if you have one) if you do not appear to be making use of the service as it was intended, such as placing calls or sending text messages for a period of 3 months". Receiving messages is not among the uses it names, so a number kept only as an inbox needs occasional outgoing use to stay alive.
A way to decide in four questions
- Does anything important send a code to this number? If yes, the number has to stay able to receive, and parking or suspending is disqualified until you have tested otherwise.
- How long are you away? Match the stay to the window that carrier publishes. Verizon's page rules out a suspension for a long stay abroad. T-Mobile's seasonal suspend is two periods of up to 90 days, and the line cannot receive messages during them. A stay past that window needs a line that stays able to receive, or a parking service whose activity rule you have read.
- What does the number cost you where you are? A home-country plan kept alive is often cheaper than a local plan plus a holding fee, and it is the version where a code arrives the same way it always did.
- What happens if it is gone? Work out which accounts would need a human on the phone, in a time zone you no longer live in. That answer, not the subscription price, is what the number is worth.
The verified figures behind all of this sit in one table at all carriers, each row with the date it was checked.
Buying a US number is a different errand from holding the one you already have. If you are arriving in the US and need a new line, start with SIM, eSIM or a US prepaid plan. The named prepaid prices are on compare named prepaid plans.