Three kinds of tools keep spam calls from ringing a business phone, and they stack: the spam filters your carrier already offers, your phone's own screening settings, and a call screening service that asks unknown callers who they are and has them press a key before your phone rings. None of them catches everything, and AT&T and Verizon say so themselves. The real question is how much risk of blocking a customer you'll accept in return for fewer interruptions.
Start with your carrier's free tools
AT&T's ActiveArmor is free with every AT&T wireless plan, and it lets you block unwanted calls or send them to voicemail. AT&T's own page says it may not detect all threats and may inadvertently block wanted calls.
T-Mobile's Scam ID and Scam Block are free on its network. Scam ID shows "Scam Likely" on suspected scam calls, and Scam Block blocks those calls before they reach your phone. Postpaid customers manage them in the T-Life app, where an Allowed numbers list keeps important numbers from being blocked. Prepaid customers turn Scam Block on by dialing #662#.
Verizon's Call Filter is free on standard monthly and prepaid plans with a compatible device. Spam goes to voicemail by default, or the call ends, depending on the setting you choose, and Verizon says it doesn't guarantee that all spam calls will be detected. Verizon's FAQ also notes that Business Lines can't use Call Filter through My Verizon, which is the fallback for phones that can't run the app.
Whichever carrier you have, save your regulars as contacts, and on T-Mobile or Verizon add them to the allowed list as well, since AT&T warns its tool may block calls you want.
Then use your phone's own settings
On an iPhone, open Settings, then Apps, then Phone. Under Call Filtering you can turn on the spam filter. Screen Unknown Callers offers three choices: Never, Ask Reason for Calling, which has the caller asked why they're calling before your phone rings, and Silence, which sends calls from unsaved numbers to voicemail. On a business phone every new customer is an unsaved number, so Silence puts first-time customers in the same place as the spam. Apple also notes that calls aren't screened while you're roaming. Our guides cover iPhone call screening and, if it's costing you calls, how to turn it off.
On a Pixel, automatic Call Screen has Call Assist ask who's calling and why. If it judges the call to be spam, your phone hangs up. Otherwise the phone rings and shows you how the caller responded. On Pixel 7 and above you choose whether to screen spam, possibly faked numbers and first-time callers. Samsung Galaxy and other Android phones are covered in the Android call screening guide.
When a call does ring through with a warning attached, our guides explain what a Potential Spam label and a Spam Risk label mean and what to do about each.
Add call screening when spam still gets through
A filter judges a number. Screening asks the caller to do something. With VettedCalls Pro your cell forwards every call to us, and a caller who isn't a saved contact and hasn't passed screening in the last 60 days hears a greeting in your business name asking who's calling and how we can help. They have 4 seconds to start talking. An AI model returns their name, a short topic and whether the call looks like spam, and then the caller hears a press 1 or press 2 choice. A caller who gives no key press hears "This number does not accept unsolicited calls. Goodbye." and the call ends. If they got that far by staying silent or sounding like spam, the number can pick up a flag on a spam list we share across every customer, and at 10 counted flags it's blocked for all of them.
A real caller who presses 1 or 2 gets through. Your phone rings in the Cloud Softphone app with the caller's number showing, and when you answer you hear their name and what they need before they're put through.
It isn't airtight. The key press is the gate: anyone who presses 1 or 2 is put through, even a caller the AI thought sounded like spam, so a live salesperson who presses a key can still reach you. You'll hear the name and topic when you answer, which tells you what the call is before you say a word.
You can also set your own rules. A number you mark as spam is blocked for your account until you unmark it. On the dashboard's Spam page you can block callers from outside the US and block whole area codes (up to 25), both off until you switch them on, and saved contacts still ring.
One cost to know about: every call we answer counts toward your plan's included minutes, spam we block included, and a blocked call usually uses one minute. Our call screening page shows each step in order.
What the numbers say
For a sense of scale, here's what three publishers that track unwanted calls report.
- The Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Call program received 1,601,611 robocall complaints in fiscal year 2025 (October 2024 through September 2025), up from 1,099,229 in fiscal 2024. The FTC says its complaint data comes from unverified consumer reports, not a survey.
- YouMail, which sells spam-protection apps, estimates that 52,477,649,500 robocalls were placed in the U.S. in 2025, extrapolated from calls made to its users.
- In YouMail's July 2026 breakdown, scams were 27 percent of robocalls, telemarketing 19 percent and alerts and reminders 36 percent, so a robocall isn't automatically spam.
- Hiya, which sells call-protection products, reports that American consumers receive an average of 9.9 unwanted calls a week, from a 2026 survey of over 12,000 consumers across six countries.
The spam call statistics guide has the rest, with the periods and caveats.
If your own number is the one being flagged
Customers seeing your business number labeled "Spam Likely" is a separate problem with separate fixes. We cover them in Spam Likely: why it shows up and what you can do about it.
What Pro includes
Pro covers the screening and shared spam registry described above, plus Priority Passthrough, voicemail with transcripts, and missed-call texts to callers who pressed 1. You keep the number you have. If it turns out your carrier can't forward calls, you get a full refund within the first 14 days, and the pricing page has the monthly price.