Vietnam Country Code +84: The Expert Guide to Calling Hanoi, Saigon, and Everywhere Else

The Vietnam country code is +84. That little prefix is the first thing you type when you want your call to leave Little Saigon in Westminster, the suburbs of Melbourne, or the 13th arrondissement in Paris, and actually ring somewhere in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, or a quiet lane in Hue. It sounds simple. In practice, most people who try to call Vietnam from abroad for the first time get a fast busy tone, a recorded message in Vietnamese they cannot parse, or a carrier bill that reads like a weekend getaway.

This guide fixes that. I am going to walk you through exactly how to dial +84 the right way from anywhere, which numbers in Vietnam belong to which city, which mobile prefix belongs to which carrier after the big 2018 reshuffle, and how to call without paying the roaming and long-distance premiums that still cling to carrier plans in 2026. If you are part of the roughly two-million-strong Vietnamese diaspora in the United States, or one of the Viet Kieu families in Australia and France, this is written with you in mind.

The short answer

To call a Vietnamese number from outside Vietnam, dial:

From the US and Canada, the exit code is 011. From most of Europe, it is 00, and from Australia it is 0011. From a mobile phone almost anywhere in the world, you can replace the exit code with a plain + sign and skip the memorization entirely.

So a landline in Hanoi written locally as 024 3825 1234 becomes +84 24 3825 1234 when you dial it from Los Angeles, Sydney, or Lyon. The leading 0 is a Vietnamese domestic trunk prefix. From abroad, you drop it. This single rule trips up more international calls to Vietnam than anything else, so if you remember nothing else from this article, remember that one.

A little context on +84

Vietnam sits inside ITU Zone 8 of the international numbering plan, which groups much of East Asia. Its neighbors in that zone are familiar numbers: China at +86, Cambodia at +855, Laos at +856. Thailand, at +66, is the odd one out among the neighbors: it sits in Zone 6 with the rest of maritime Southeast Asia and Oceania. A single national numbering plan covers the whole country, north to south. It used to be run by the Ministry of Information and Communications, which was folded into the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2025.

Two numbering reforms since the mid-2010s matter if you have old contacts in your phone.

In 2017, Vietnam standardized its landline area codes. Most provincial codes changed, and the result is the current set shown below. If you have a business card from a trip before 2017, there is a very good chance the number on it will not connect, or will connect to someone else entirely.

In 2018, mobile numbers were shortened from 11 digits to 10. Every number that used to begin with 012x, 016x, 018x, or 0199 moved to a new prefix: Mobifone's 0120, 0121, 0122, 0126, and 0128, for example, became 070, 079, 077, 076, and 078, and Viettel's 0162 to 0169 became 032 to 039. If you have Vietnamese mobile numbers saved from the early 2010s, they probably need updating before +84 will route them correctly.

Vietnamese area codes: the ones you actually need

Vietnam gives every province its own landline area code. These are the codes a traveler, a family member, or a business caller is most likely to encounter. Each is shown in the form you dial from abroad, after +84, with the trunk 0 already removed. The full list of Vietnamese area codes covers the rest.

A pattern worth noticing: the two largest cities, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, got two-digit area codes in the 2017 plan. Everywhere else uses three-digit area codes. Before 2017 the big-city codes were shorter still: Hanoi was 04 and Ho Chi Minh City was 08, and Da Nang was 0511. If a Hanoi or Saigon landline is written as 04 or 08 followed by eight digits, it is in the old format; add the 2 (024, 028) and it should connect.

Vietnam also merged its 63 provinces into 34 in mid-2025, so Vung Tau is now part of Ho Chi Minh City and Hai Phong has absorbed Hai Duong. So far the existing landline codes have stayed attached to the old areas, which is why the table lists cities rather than the new provinces.

Landline numbers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have an 8-digit subscriber part. In other provinces, the subscriber part is 7 digits. Either way the total length is 11 digits once you include the trunk 0, or 10 digits after +84.

Mobile prefixes and which carrier is which

Most calls to Vietnam from the diaspora are to mobiles, not landlines. After the 2018 reorganization, Vietnamese mobile numbers all begin with one of five prefix families. Mobile numbers are 10 digits in local form and 9 digits after +84 once you drop the leading 0.

• 03x: Viettel, the military-owned carrier with the largest subscriber base in the country.
• 05x: the smaller challengers, Vietnamobile and Gmobile.
• 07x: mostly Mobifone.
• 08x: mostly Vinaphone, with 086 belonging to Viettel and 089 to Mobifone.
• 09x: the oldest range, split by second digit: Mobifone on 090 and 093, Vinaphone on 091 and 094, Viettel on 096, 097, and 098, and 092 and 099 with the smaller networks.

So a Vietnamese friend who writes her number as 090 123 4567 on paper is reachable from abroad as +84 90 123 4567. The leading 0 is gone, and the +84 goes in front.

Carrier identity does not change how you dial. Vietnam now also lets people keep their number when they switch networks, so the prefix tells you where a number started rather than where it lives today. It still matters if you are buying a top-up voucher for a relative's prepaid SIM, since vouchers are network-specific.

Calling from the US, Australia, and France: concrete examples

Say your mother lives in District 1 in Ho Chi Minh City and her landline is 028 3822 7777. Here is how that same call is dialed from three of the largest Vietnamese diaspora countries, the United States, Australia, and France.

• From the United States (including Hawaii): 011 84 28 3822 7777
• From Australia: 0011 84 28 3822 7777
• From France: 00 84 28 3822 7777

From a mobile phone with international calling enabled, you can simply dial +84 28 3822 7777 from any of those countries and it will work. The plus sign is the universal substitute for whatever exit code your home network expects. In a browser dialer like Phonecall, the + form is the one to use.

If instead you are calling a Viettel mobile number written locally as 096 555 1234, the dialing becomes:

• From the United States: 011 84 96 555 1234
• From Australia: 0011 84 96 555 1234
• From France: 00 84 96 555 1234
• From a mobile anywhere, or from Phonecall: +84 96 555 1234

Notice that the mobile prefix 096 loses its leading 0, becoming 96, exactly the same rule as for landline area codes.

What a call to Vietnam actually costs

This is where the carriers quietly take a lot of money from people who do not shop around. A one-hour call to a Vietnamese mobile on a US carrier's pay-per-minute international rate, without an international add-on, can run to tens of dollars, and the big US carriers' standard rates to Vietnam sit well above Phonecall's unless you buy a monthly international pass. Pay-as-you-go rates from Australian and French carriers can be just as steep, and an evening of out-of-bundle calls is enough to spike a bill.

For comparison, Phonecall charges $0.25 per minute to Vietnamese mobiles and $0.28 per minute to landlines, billed per second, with no connection fee and no monthly minimum. Vietnam is one of the few places where the landline is slightly dearer than the mobile. A one-hour conversation with your parents' mobile costs $15.00, and a five-minute check-in with your cousin costs about $1.25. You can see the live rate for Vietnam, and every other country, on the Phonecall rates page.

Phonecall works entirely in your browser. There is nothing to install. You sign in, you type or paste the Vietnamese number in its +84 form, you confirm the rate shown on screen, and you talk. New accounts get 30 seconds of free call time on signup, which is enough to test the audio quality against your own ear before you buy any credits. You can call any number in Vietnam, landline or mobile, and the same account reaches the 218 countries Phonecall supports.

Try a call to Vietnam with 30 seconds free

When the call does not connect

Three failure modes account for most of the trouble with +84.

The first is the trunk-0 problem. You dialed +84 024 3825 1234 instead of +84 24 3825 1234. The Vietnamese network reads the leading 0 as part of the subscriber number, cannot find a match, and either plays an error or routes to the wrong exchange. Fix: drop the 0 after +84, always, from any country, on any device.

The second is a stale pre-2017 or pre-2018 number. You dialed what used to be a valid number, but the digits have been retired. Fix: ask your contact to send you their current number from inside Vietnam, where their own phone will show it in the correct format. If they send it with the leading 0, you still drop that 0 when calling from abroad.

The third is a short code or restricted line. Vietnamese short service codes and some enterprise lines cannot be reached from abroad at all. This is a routing policy on the Vietnamese side, not a bug in your calling app. Fix: use the regular geographic number if you have it, or ask your contact to initiate the call outbound.

If none of those apply and you are still stuck, try the call from the Phonecall web app directly in the browser. The 30 second free trial on a fresh account is plenty of time to confirm whether a specific number will connect.

Emergency numbers in Vietnam

If you are in Vietnam yourself, or you are helping a traveler on the ground over the phone, the emergency numbers you want are:

• 113: police
• 114: fire and rescue
• 115: ambulance and medical emergency
• 112: search and rescue

A note worth underlining for anyone used to European dialing habits: 112 in Vietnam is not the all-purpose emergency number it is in the European Union. In the EU, 112 reaches a unified dispatcher who routes you to the right service. In Vietnam, 112 is the search and rescue line, which is mostly relevant for maritime and remote-area incidents. For a street-level emergency in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, you want 113, 114, or 115 directly. Travelers from France in particular should keep that difference in mind.

None of these emergency numbers are reachable with +84 from outside Vietnam. They are domestic short codes. If you need to reach Vietnamese police from abroad, you must call a specific station's regular geographic number. If you are planning the trip itself, Vietnam's official tourism site covers the practical side.

Time zones and when to call

Vietnam runs on Indochina Time (ICT), UTC+7. The whole country has kept that single clock since 1975, with no daylight saving time. That means the offset between Vietnam and your home country changes twice a year if you are in a daylight-saving region.

In rough terms, in October 2026:

• Pacific Time (Los Angeles) is 14 hours behind Hanoi. 7 pm in LA is 9 am the next day in Hanoi.
• Eastern Time (New York) runs 11 hours behind Hanoi, and Central Time (Houston) 12 hours behind.
• Sydney is 4 hours ahead of Hanoi from early October, when Australian daylight saving starts, and 3 hours ahead in the Australian winter.
• Paris is 5 hours behind Hanoi in summer, 6 hours behind in winter.

The friendliest window to call older relatives, in my experience, is Vietnam morning. In practice that means the evening before for the US West Coast, or around midday for Sydney and Melbourne. For France, Vietnam morning is the middle of the night, so French callers do better aiming for Vietnamese late afternoon or evening, which lands around lunchtime in Paris. If your relative is a shopkeeper or runs a small business, afternoon Vietnam time is often better than morning, because mornings in Hanoi and Saigon are busy.

Three audience cases

Three readers tend to find this page. Here is the practical shape of the solution for each.

The US-based child of Vietnamese immigrants, usually in California or Texas, calls parents and grandparents a few times a week. The spend is dominated by long calls, not frequent calls. Carrier plans with per-minute international rates eat into this fast. A browser-based per-second rate of $0.25 a minute to a mobile means a full hour-long weekend call with grandma costs $15.00, and a short weekday check-in costs pocket change. An hour every weekend for a whole year comes to about $780.00.

The Australian Viet Kieu small-business owner, often in Melbourne or Sydney, calls suppliers in Ho Chi Minh City and factory contacts in the industrial zones of Binh Duong (now part of Ho Chi Minh City) or Dong Nai. These calls are usually short but frequent, and they need to happen during Vietnamese business hours, which fall across the Australian afternoon and early evening. The savings here come less from the per-minute rate and more from avoiding roaming entirely by using a browser phone with a stable connection on the Australian side.

The French-Vietnamese professional in Paris, Lyon, or Marseille often maintains ties to extended family in central Vietnam, particularly around Hue and Da Nang. Mobile plans in France often leave international calls to Vietnam outside the bundle, and the use case here is calls that are both long and emotionally important, so quality matters as much as price. Browser calling over a home fiber connection avoids the weak indoor mobile signal that so often chops up a call.

In all three cases, sign up and use the free 30 second trial to listen to your own voice coming back on a Vietnamese line, and only then decide whether to top up with credits.

Calling other countries from the same account

Phonecall covers 218 countries at per-minute rates listed on the public rates page. If your family and work ties cross borders, the same account that calls Vietnam also calls the United States, Australia, France, and neighboring Cambodia and Thailand without any additional setup. One top-up, 218 destinations, pay-per-second.

One last thing

Dialing +84 correctly is a small skill, but it unlocks something that matters. For a lot of readers of this page, it is the difference between hearing your mother's voice clearly on a Sunday morning and listening to her through a laggy app that cuts out every third sentence. Get the prefix right, drop the trunk zero, pick a sensible per-minute rate, and the mechanical part of the call disappears. What is left is the conversation.

If you want to test it right now, open Phonecall in your browser, sign in, and use your 30 seconds of free call time to dial a Vietnamese number you know by heart. If it sounds right, keep going. If it does not, you have lost nothing.