HLR Lookup in Numbers: inside the data powering global mobile communications

As businesses lean more heavily on mobile to reach, verify, protect and communicate with their customers, the need for accurate phone number intelligence has never been greater. Behind the scenes, HLR Lookup plays a critical role in determining whether a number is real, reachable and worth sending to.

At HLR Lookup, we’ve taken a closer look at our 2025 data, from where lookups are happening, to which industries rely on them most, and the true cost of getting number validation wrong.

1. Where are HLR lookups happening?

Our data shows that HLR traffic is truly global, but a handful of markets stand out.

In 2025, the top 5 destination countries for HLR lookups on HLRLookup.com were:

🇩🇪 Germany
🇮🇩 Indonesia
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
🇺🇸 United States
🇦🇺 Australia

Across these markets, businesses use HLR to:

• Validate mobile numbers before sending campaigns

• Reduce undeliverable SMS and wasted spend

• Improve routing and delivery for critical, time-sensitive messages
  

These are high-volume, mobile-first markets where the accuracy of a single phone number can make the difference between a successful campaign and wasted budget.

2. 1.2 million disposable numbers… and counting

Not all numbers are created equal.

At HLR Lookup, our Disposable Number database has reached 1.2 million entries. Each one represents a number that is temporary, short-lived or designed for single-use signups, and they carry a hidden cost.

Disposable numbers can:

• Drain SMS budgets on traffic that will never convert

• Inflate sign-up and verification metrics, hiding the real picture

• Increase exposure to fraud, abuse and fake accounts
  

By spotting disposable numbers early in the journey, businesses can protect SMS budgets, improve campaign performance and keep their customer databases clean and trustworthy. For any organisation sending large volumes of SMS or relying on mobile numbers to onboard users, disposable number detection is no longer a “nice to have”; it’s essential.

3. Hundreds of millions of verifications, and a clear carrier trend

Every day, HLR Lookup users upload lists, run one-off checks and integrate via API to verify their data. Each lookup is a live query against real mobile carrier networks around the world.

In 2025, hundreds of millions of numbers were verified through our platform. A clear trend emerged: many of the numbers we checked were associated with carrier networks operating predominantly across Europe.

Working alongside global networks, HLR lookups are now deeply embedded in:

• Fraud mitigation – identifying fake or risky numbers before they can be used for account takeovers or abuse

• Data compliance – helping businesses ensure their contact lists meet strict regional standards and regulations

• Operational efficiency – powering more effective, cost-saving routing for telecoms and messaging providers
  

The result? A safer, more efficient environment for both enterprises and their customers.

4. Who’s using HLR – and why?

HLR Lookup sits quietly behind the scenes of a wide range of industries, but a few stand out in our data.

Our top 3 industries using HLR are:

• Enterprise businesses with large customer databases
  Using HLR to verify, validate and cleanse customer numbers at scale. From confirming that numbers are real and active, to helping spot potentially fraudulent activity.

• SMS aggregators
  Running HLR checks before sending campaigns on behalf of their customers, to cut undeliverable messages, reduce costs and optimize delivery.

• Data providers
  Using HLR lookups to cleanse, verify and validate phone data before passing it on to their own clients.
  

Today, HLR Lookup is part of the infrastructure behind some of the most data-intensive operations in credit, risk and phone-number intelligence, providing the number insight they rely on every day.

5. The hidden cost of failed SMS

The stakes are high. Global A2P (application-to-person) SMS volumes run into the trillions each year, with spend in the tens of billions of dollars. Even a small percentage of waste quickly becomes a very large number.

Industry estimates suggest that:

• At least 5% of global A2P SMS is now thought to be fraudulent AIT (artificially inflated traffic).*

• When you factor in fraud, dead/invalid numbers and blocking, realistic “waste” is closer to 5–10%.*

• That translates to around $3–7 billion every year in SMS that never has a chance to reach a real customer.*

• At the same time, average international A2P prices have almost doubled since 2021, magnifying the cost of every undeliverable or fraudulent message.*

This is where HLR lookups pay for themselves: by validating numbers before sending, businesses can cut undeliverable and fraudulent traffic, protect their budgets and safeguard ROI as messaging costs continue to rise.

The key takeaway: trust the numbers you send to

Taken together, these insights paint a clear picture:

• HLR Lookup is now a core part of the mobile data stack for enterprises, aggregators and data providers around the world.

• The markets and carriers where HLR Lookup is most used tend to be those with high regulatory standards, high volumes and high fraud risk.

• The financial impact of failed, fraudulent or misdirected SMS makes accurate number intelligence a strategic necessity, not an optional extra.
  

HLR Lookup will continue to focus on what it does best: delivering fast, reliable, global number validation, so businesses can trust the numbers they send to, and customers receive only the messages that matter.

*Supportive data sources: Mobilesquared, Enea & Mobilesquared (AIT), MarketGrowthReports.