TextNow vs Hushed vs TwinPhone: Which Second Number Should You Get?

These three are not really competitors — they solve different problems and the right pick follows from which problem you have. TextNow is free and ad-supported, for a permanent-ish second US number. Hushed sells short-term disposable numbers you take for a week and drop. TwinPhone is a pay-as-you-go international calling service that also rents US and Canadian numbers.

Pick TextNow if you want a free second US number and will tolerate advertising. Pick Hushed if you need a number for one transaction and then want it gone. Pick TwinPhone if the calling matters more than the number, particularly if you call abroad.

This is published by TwinPhone. For the two most common reasons people search this comparison — "I want a free second number" and "I need a burner" — TextNow and Hushed are the better answers, and this article says so.

All three give you a phone number that is not your SIM. That surface similarity is why they get compared, and it hides the fact that they are built around different business models with different consequences for you.

TextNow: free, paid for by advertising

You get a US or Canadian number at no cost. The revenue comes from ads in the app and from paid upgrades. Free domestic calling and texting inside the US and Canada is the core offer, and it has been for years.

Hushed: privacy on a short lease

You pay a small subscription for a number you intend to discard. Its whole design assumes the number is temporary, which is why short terms exist here and nowhere else in this comparison.

TwinPhone: metered calling, number optional

The product is outbound calling billed by the second. A rented number is an add-on you can skip entirely — most people using it to call family abroad never rent one. No subscription applies to the calling itself.

Why that matters

Ask yourself whether you are buying a number or buying minutes. If it is a number, TextNow and Hushed are the shortlist. If it is minutes, TwinPhone is, and the number question is separate.

The pricing models are as different as the products, so a like-for-like number is misleading without stating the model. Competitor pricing checked 14 August 2026 against each provider's public pricing page.

TextNow

Free for the number and for US and Canada calling and texting, funded by ads. Paid tiers remove ads, and a separate data plan turns it into a full phone service on supported devices. International calling is available at per-minute rates that are not the service's strength.

Hushed

Subscription per number, with short-term options measured in days or weeks alongside monthly and annual plans. Cost per number is modest; cost across several numbers held at once is not.

TwinPhone

No subscription for calling. You add credit — $10 minimum, and it does not expire — and calls draw against it at $0.02/min to the US and Canada, from $0.1064/min to India, from $0.02/min to Mexico and from $0.1675/min to Japan. Billing is per second with a minimum charge on very short answered calls, because both carriers invoice a full minute the moment a call is answered. A US or Canadian number, if you want one, is $3.19/month.

The comparison that actually matters

If you make no calls in a given month, TextNow costs nothing, Hushed costs its subscription, and TwinPhone costs nothing unless you are renting a number. If you make two hours of international calls, TextNow and Hushed both get expensive and TwinPhone does not.

TwinPhone's figures come from the billing code. TextNow and Hushed rows are market claims from their public pricing.

TextNow gives you a free US or Canadian phone number with free calling and texting inside those two countries, funded by advertising in the app. It has been doing this for over a decade and it is the most-used service of the three.

What it does well

The price. A real number that receives calls and SMS, free domestic calling, at no cost. For a second line you hand to strangers — marketplace listings, deliveries, a side project — it is hard to argue with. The paid tier removes ads cheaply, and the data plan is a genuine option for a cheap second phone.

Where it falls down

Ads on the free tier are prominent. Numbers are recycled after a period of inactivity, which has caught out people who assumed a free number was permanent — losing a number that services authenticate against is a serious problem, not an inconvenience. US and Canada only. International rates are unremarkable, and the browser experience is weak compared with the app.

Who it is for

US and Canadian residents who want a free second number for everyday, low-stakes use and will keep the account active enough to hold it.

Hushed sells phone numbers on short subscriptions — days or weeks as well as months — for people who want a number for a specific purpose and then want it gone. Nothing else in this comparison does short terms.

What it does well

Genuine disposability. Selling a car, running a dating profile, signing up for a trial you do not want attached to your real number, giving a contact to someone you have just met — Hushed is designed for exactly those and does not pretend otherwise. Numbers are available in several countries, which is broader than the other two here.

Where it falls down

Costs mount if you hold several numbers at once, since each is its own subscription. It is not built to be a permanent line and should not be used as one. Calling rates are not a reason to choose it. App required.

Who it is for

Anyone with a defined, temporary need. If you cannot say when you will stop using the number, this is probably the wrong product.

TwinPhone is a browser-based pay-as-you-go calling service that also rents US and Canadian numbers, aimed at people whose calls leave North America. It is our product, and it is the narrowest fit of the three for anyone who simply wants a free second number.

What it does well

The calling. No app on either end, no SIM, no phone number needed to sign up, and the destination rate on screen before the call connects. Because there is no subscription on outbound calling, an account costs nothing to keep between calls and the balance does not expire. Rented numbers take inbound calls and inbound SMS in the same browser tab.

Where it falls down

No free tier at all — the US-to-US calls TextNow gives away cost $0.02/min here. Numbers are US and Canada only, so it cannot match Hushed's country spread. No short-term numbers, no video, no app-to-app messaging, no voicemail transcription, and inbound number ports are not accepted. There is also no mobile app: it is a browser product, which some people will simply not want.

Who it is for

People whose calling is international, and people who cannot sign up elsewhere because they have no phone number to verify with.

Five concrete situations, and the answer for each.

"I want a second number for marketplace listings and deliveries"

TextNow. It is free, the number is real, and the stakes are low enough that ads and eventual recycling do not matter.

"I need a number for one transaction and then gone"

Hushed. It is the only one here built for a defined end date, and paying a month's subscription for a week's use is what the short terms avoid.

"I call family in another country every week"

TwinPhone, or WhatsApp if they have it. Neither TextNow nor Hushed is priced for sustained international calling.

"I want to separate work calls from personal permanently"

TextNow if the work is US-domestic and you can live with ads, or a paid product like OpenPhone if it is a real business line. A recycled number on a professional card is a bad outcome, so weigh free against permanence here.

"I do not have a phone number to sign up with"

TwinPhone or Hushed — both take an email address. TextNow's verification can require one, which is the specific case where free stops being available.

Every phone number you do not own outright is on a lease, and all three of these services reclaim numbers under conditions most users never read. This is the single most consequential difference between a virtual number and the number on your SIM, and it is worth understanding before you print one on anything.

Why numbers get recycled at all

Phone numbers are a finite, regulated resource. National numbering plans allocate blocks to operators, operators are expected to use them, and unused numbers are supposed to return to the pool rather than sit idle. A provider holding thousands of dormant free numbers is paying for inventory that earns nothing, so reclamation is both a regulatory expectation and a straightforward cost decision.

What triggers it on a free number

Inactivity, measured by activity the provider can see. Receiving a text does not always count; making a call or opening the app usually does. TextNow and similar free services reclaim after a period of dormancy that is measured in weeks rather than months. People who set up a free number, use it for one thing and then leave it alone are exactly the profile that loses one.

What triggers it on a paid number

A failed payment. Hushed numbers expire at the end of their term unless renewed, and a rented TwinPhone number is released when the monthly rental stops. Grace periods exist but are short, and a card that expires while you are travelling is the classic way to lose a number you were happily paying for.

What you lose when it happens

Everything routed through that number. Two-factor codes go to a stranger. Contacts who saved it reach someone else. Any account that uses it as a recovery method may become unrecoverable, and in the worst case the person who receives the number next can use those codes to take over accounts. This is not hypothetical — it is the standard failure mode of treating a recycled number as permanent.

How to avoid the problem

Keep anything security-relevant on a carrier-issued mobile number. Use virtual numbers for the things it does not matter to lose: marketplace listings, deliveries, a line you hand to strangers. If a virtual number does need to persist, pay for it and make sure the card behind it does not expire.

Three services get suggested alongside these constantly, and each is a better answer than all three of the above for a specific person. Leaving them out would make this comparison look more decisive than it deserves to be.

Google Voice

Free, gives a free US number, and free US-to-US calling. If you live in the United States and already have a US phone number to register with, it beats TextNow on quality and beats TwinPhone on domestic price, because it charges nothing. The reason it is not the headline answer is eligibility: new personal signups are US-only and require an existing US number, so a large share of people asking this question cannot get it at all.

OpenPhone

Around $15 per user per month for a US or Canadian number with a shared inbox a whole team can answer from. If the number is a business line rather than a personal second line, this is a better product than any of the three compared above — none of them do shared ownership of a conversation properly. It is expensive for one person and pointless if nobody else needs access.

Talkatone

Effectively TextNow with a lighter interface and a smaller company behind it. Same free ad-supported model, same US and Canada limitation, same number-recycling behaviour. Worth trying if you like the TextNow proposition and dislike the TextNow app.

Why the three in this article are grouped at all

They are what people compare, not what a neutral shortlist would contain. TextNow and Hushed both show up in "second phone number" searches, TwinPhone shows up in international calling searches, and the overlap is that all three hand you a number without a SIM. That is a thin basis for a comparison, which is why the useful conclusion here is about identifying your problem rather than picking a winner.

Three limitations apply to all three services and to essentially every virtual number provider. Worth knowing before you rely on one.

Bank and government verification

An increasing number of services screen for VoIP numbers and refuse them at signup. Banks, payment providers and government portals are the strictest. This applies to TextNow, Hushed and TwinPhone equally — it is a property of the number type, not of the provider. Keep a carrier-issued mobile for accounts where losing access would be serious.

Emergency calling

None of these is a reliable route to emergency services, and none should be your only phone. If the device in your pocket has no SIM and no other line, that is a genuine safety gap rather than a technicality.

Guaranteed number permanence

Free numbers are recycled on inactivity, short-term numbers are designed to expire, and rented numbers are released when you stop paying. A phone number is a lease in all three cases, and the grace period before release is shorter than most people assume.