Stay connected with
family back home
Your parents answer their regular phone. No apps to install, no accounts to create. Just clear calls at rates that make weekly check-ins affordable. From $0.03/min, no contract.
Download Telvio FreeStaying in touch shouldn't cost this much
The usual options all have the same problem: they're either expensive, unreliable, or require your family to do something complicated.
$30–50/month
International phone plan
A fixed monthly cost whether you call once or twenty times. Most of the minutes go unused.
Expire in 30–90 days
Calling cards
You buy $20 in credit, use $8, and lose the rest when the card expires. The rates are also hidden behind connection fees.
Requires family to have it
App-to-app (WhatsApp etc.)
Works great if your parents or grandparents are tech-savvy enough to install and keep an app updated. Many aren't.
Built for people who call home regularly
Calls real phones. No app needed on their end.
Your parents, grandparents, siblings — whoever you call — answer their regular mobile or landline. They don't need Telvio. They don't need a smartphone. They don't need anything except their existing phone.
Works for landlines and mobiles in 200+ countries
Per-second billing — no wasted money
A 4-minute 20-second call is billed as 4 minutes and 20 seconds. Not 5 minutes. Not rounded up. You only pay for what you use.
No monthly commitment
Buy minutes once. Use them over weeks or months. No subscription, no recurring charge, no cancellation to remember.
$7.20/week to call India. Not $45.
You moved to Canada. Your parents are in Mumbai. Every Sunday you call for 30 minutes. They answer their home phone as usual.
India rate: $0.24/min × 30 minutes = $7.20. A monthly international plan for the same calls: $40–50. Same call. Different cost.
With Telvio
30 min × $0.24/min
$7.20/week
International phone plan
Mostly unused minutes
$40–50/month
Video call (parent needs app)
But mom can't figure out the updates
$0/week
Most common expat corridors
Per-minute rates to landlines and mobiles. No connection fee added on top.
| Country | Landline | Mobile |
|---|---|---|
| 🇮🇳 India | $0.24/min | $0.24/min |
| 🇵🇭 Philippines | $1.16/min | $1.16/min |
| 🇲🇽 Mexico | $0.05/min | $0.05/min |
| 🇳🇬 Nigeria | $0.32/min | $0.32/min |
| 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | $0.03/min | $0.03/min |
| 🇩🇪 Germany | $0.27/min | $0.27/min |
| 🇧🇷 Brazil | $0.14/min | $0.14/min |
| 🇹🇷 Turkey | $0.10/min | $0.50/min |
Sample rates. Full list of 200+ countries in the app. Rates subject to change.
View all ratesQuestions from expats
Does my family need to install Telvio to receive my calls?
No. Telvio calls connect to regular landline and mobile phones. Your family picks up their phone as they normally would. No app, no account, no setup on their end.
Do unused minutes roll over or expire?
Minutes never expire. There is no rollover deadline, no monthly reset, and no expiration date. Buy minutes when it makes sense and use them on your own schedule.
Is there a monthly plan for regular callers?
Telvio has no monthly plans or subscriptions. You purchase minute packages once — Starter (30 min for $1.99), Standard (120 min for $4.99), or Pro (500 min for $9.99) — and use them at your own pace.
Can I call back home from any country I move to?
Yes. Your Telvio balance follows you regardless of where you are. Move from Canada to Germany — your minutes and calling rates remain the same. Your location as the caller does not affect what you pay.
Can someone call me back on Telvio?
Telvio is an outbound calling app. People cannot call your Telvio account directly. If you need incoming calls, keep your home country SIM active or use a separate service for inbound calls.
What is the cheapest way to call home regularly?
The Pro pack (500 minutes, $9.99) gives the lowest per-minute rate. For a country like India at $0.24/min, the $9.99 pack gives you over 41 minutes — nearly 3 hours of calls — enough for several months of weekly family calls.
Call home tonight
Download Telvio free. Your first minute is on us. No registration, no contract.
Download TelvioThe calling problem when you live somewhere else
A traveller's calling problem lasts two weeks. Someone who has moved has it permanently, and it is a different problem: not how to avoid one expensive month, but what the cheapest sustainable arrangement is for calling the same handful of people every week for years.
That changes what matters. A saving of a cent a minute is irrelevant on a two-week trip and significant across a decade of Sunday calls. Credit that expires after 180 days is a minor annoyance to a traveller and a recurring loss to someone who calls monthly. And the person on the other end — often a parent, often on a landline, often not interested in installing anything — is a fixed constraint rather than something to work around.
The single most useful thing to establish early is what the people you call actually have. A smartphone with reliable data changes the answer completely; a landline in a village removes half the market from consideration.
Building an arrangement that lasts
- Assume nothing about the other end. The relative who says they have WhatsApp may have it on a phone that is off, or on a connection that drops. A service that reaches an ordinary telephone number always works, which is worth more than a saving.
- Prefer a landline where one exists. In most countries a landline costs meaningfully less to reach than a mobile, sometimes several times less. Across years of weekly calls that single choice beats any provider comparison.
- Prefer credit that does not expire. Regular callers rarely notice an expiry until a life event interrupts the routine for six months. Money you paid and cannot spend is the highest per-minute rate there is.
- Fix the time window once. A recurring call at a time that works on both clocks removes the arithmetic permanently. Note that the offset moves twice a year unless both countries either observe daylight saving or neither does.
- Keep a fallback. Networks change, services shut down, and a route can go bad for weeks. Two arrangements is not paranoia when the alternative is not reaching family.
What it costs to keep in touch, in real numbers
A weekly half-hour call to a landline in a cheap corridor — Mexico, India, Canada — costs under a dollar at two to six cents a minute. Fifty-two of those is roughly the price of one month of a mobile add-on.
The same call to a European mobile is a different arithmetic entirely, because mobile termination in much of Europe is expensive. That is not a provider difference; it is a wholesale rate, and it is the same with everyone. Where the person you call has both, the landline is the whole saving.
The comparison worth making is against what you are doing now. Carrier international add-ons are priced as monthly bundles: good value if you use them weekly, poor value if you call twice a month, and the arithmetic turns on usage rather than the headline. The calculator prices your actual pattern.
Being reachable, not just able to call
Calling out is the easy half. Being reachable on a number the people at home recognise is the part that quietly matters, because a parent will not learn a new international number and a bank in your old country will not call an app.
The usual arrangement is to keep the home number alive on a cheap plan for incoming calls and SMS, and to place outgoing calls over the internet. It costs a little and it keeps two things working: family who dial the number they have always dialled, and two-factor codes from institutions that still send them by text.
If that is not practical, a virtual number in your home country is the alternative — a number people can call that rings wherever you are. Our guides cover what those services actually deliver, which is less than the marketing suggests in the specific case of receiving verification codes.
Bottom line
For someone living abroad the decisions that matter are structural rather than per-minute: call the landline where one exists, use credit that does not expire, fix a weekly time that works on both clocks, and keep a second way to get through.
Being reachable is a separate problem from being able to call. Keeping the home number alive for incoming calls and SMS solves the two things an app cannot: family dialling the number they already know, and verification codes from institutions that still send them by text.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest way to call home from abroad?
An internet calling app to an ordinary phone number, at a few cents a minute, and to a landline rather than a mobile where the choice exists. Carrier roaming and international add-ons are both substantially more expensive for anyone calling regularly.
Does the person I call need the same app?
Not if you use a service that connects to the telephone network — the call arrives as an ordinary phone call on any phone, including a landline. Free messaging apps are the ones that require the other person to have installed something.
Should I keep my home phone number after moving?
Usually yes, at least for a while. It is what family and institutions already dial, and it is where two-factor codes are sent. A cheap plan that keeps incoming calls and SMS working, paired with internet calling for outgoing, is the common arrangement.
Why is calling a mobile more expensive than a landline?
Because mobile operators typically charge a higher wholesale rate to accept an incoming call. In a minority of countries — the United Kingdom, Germany and Kenya among them — regulation reversed that and the mobile is cheaper. Both rates are published for every country here.
Do calling credits expire?
With some services, yes: several large providers expire unused balance after 180 days and some charge a monthly fee on a dormant one. Telvio credit does not expire, which matters most for exactly this audience — regular callers whose routine occasionally pauses.
How do I handle the time difference for a regular call?
Fix one weekly slot that works on both clocks and stop recalculating. Be aware the offset changes twice a year unless both countries observe daylight saving or neither does; the best-time planner reads today's offset from your own device rather than a figure written in an article.
