Search the Alabama Phone Directory

How to Find Phone Numbers in Alabama

Alabama has no single phone book that covers every office in the state. The closest thing for state government is Inform Alabama, the official agency directory at inform.alabama.gov. It lists every state agency with a search box, sortable columns, and a detail page for each entry. The main portal at Alabama.gov links to agencies, elected officials, and services. City numbers work differently. Alabama has no statewide city staff directory, so the path runs through each city's own website and its city hall switchboard.

The right starting point depends on who you are trying to reach. A short routine covers most cases.

1. For a state agency or state employee, search Inform Alabama and open the agency's detail page for its phone and address.
2. For a city service, search the city name plus "contact" or "department directory," or call the city hall switchboard.
3. For a teacher or principal, use the state school listing from ALSDE or the district's own staff directory.
4. For an unknown caller, run a reverse lookup through official channels first, then a labeled third-party tool.
5. For a number that is not published, file a public records request with the clerk or agency. Expect personal and sensitive lines to be redacted.

When a directory fails, fall back on the switchboard. Almost every Alabama agency publishes a main line even when it hides direct staff numbers. Dialing 211 also works for community services, shelters, and benefit programs across the state.

Area Codes Serving Alabama

Seven area codes serve Alabama today. They break into four regions. Central and west-central Alabama, including Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, use 205 and its 659 overlay. Northern Alabama, including Huntsville and Decatur, uses 256 and its 938 overlay. South-central and southeast Alabama, including Montgomery, Auburn, and Dothan, use 334 and the new 483 overlay. Southwest and coastal Alabama, including Mobile and Baldwin County, use 251. The whole state started with one code, 205, back in 1947.

Local calls take ten digits everywhere in Alabama. Long-distance calls take 1 plus the ten digits. The 483 overlay is the newest change. Permissive ten-digit dialing in the 334 region began July 23, 2025, and mandatory ten-digit dialing began January 23, 2026. The full region-by-region breakdown lives on the Alabama phone area codes page.

Public Safety Phone Numbers in Alabama

Call 911 for any immediate emergency: police, fire, medical, or a crime in progress. Keep 911 clear of routine questions about records, licenses, or bills. Alabama has no statewide 311 line for those, so non-emergency city matters go to your local police department or city hall. Two other three-digit codes carry much of the load statewide. The 988 lifeline handles mental health, substance use, and suicide crises. The 211 line handles food, shelter, utility help, and other community services.

The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency covers state-level law enforcement, and its contact directory packs an unusual amount onto one page: SBI field offices, Marine Patrol districts, Highway Patrol posts, radio rooms, and driver license offices.

The same page lists ALEA's general line at 334-676-6000, the SBI crime and drug hotline at 800-392-8011, and the missing child and alert line at 800-228-7688. Other statewide safety numbers include the DHR adult abuse hotline at 1-800-458-7214, the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, and the RAINN sexual assault line at 1-800-656-4673.

Note: ALEA warns that its website and email are not monitored around the clock, so anything urgent belongs with 911 or your local police, not a web form.

Alabama State Government Phone Directory

Inform Alabama is the official state agency directory. It covers everything from the Department of Public Health and DHR to the Public Service Commission, Revenue, ALEA, the Secretary of State, and dozens of licensing boards. Each agency name opens a detail page with its phone number and address. The Governor's Office answers at 1-334-242-7100, per the USAGov Alabama page, at 600 Dexter Ave. in Montgomery.

The Inform Alabama directory behaves like a searchable table rather than a static list, which makes it the fastest route to an agency number.

The screen above shows the working parts of that directory, which come down to a few simple controls.

A sample detail page shows what to expect. The Administrative Office of Courts entry lists the agency name, a description, its address, and the main line at 334-954-5000. Personal staff lines do not appear at the directory level.

Alabama School and University Directories

The Alabama State Department of Education publishes the Alabama Public and Private School Listing, which links to the statewide education directory and the 2025 Directory of Alabama Public Schools PDF. The listing carries the system name, school name, administrator, address, phone, website, and grade range for schools across the state.

District sites often go deeper than the state listing. Montgomery Public Schools runs a staff directory with a name search and a department filter, and each result shows the staff member's role, department, phone, and email. On the higher-education side, the University of Alabama posts its campus numbers on one contact page, and the University of South Alabama lists departments A to Z with a phone and building for each.

• Alabama State Department of Education - 334-694-4900 main line
• ALSDE Special Education Services - 334-694-4782, or 800-392-8020 for Alabama residents
• Alabama Commission on Higher Education - 334-242-1998
• University of Alabama campus information - 205-348-6010, with a full campus contact page
• University of South Alabama - department directory with lines like the Registrar at 251-460-6251

Alabama Utility and Outage Phone Numbers

Utility calls split into two kinds, and mixing them up wastes time. Emergency and outage lines handle downed wires, gas leaks, and service failures. Customer service lines handle bills, payments, and account questions. Water, sewer, and trash service in Alabama is mostly local, run by city utilities, water boards, and county haulers, so those numbers vary by town. The big statewide providers are easier to pin down.

Alabama Power posts its customer service number on its billing page, along with online outage reporting and an outage map.

Two rules from those providers are worth keeping in mind. Alabama law requires everyone, homeowners included, to contact Alabama 811 at least two full working days before digging. And the PSC asks you to contact the utility first, with dates and names written down, before filing a complaint.

Health and Social Services Numbers in Alabama

The Alabama Department of Public Health answers statewide questions at 1-800-252-1818, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., excluding state holidays. Its locations page links to contact lists for every county health department and district office. ADPH also publishes a central office telephone listing PDF with direct division and staff numbers, a buried resource most people never find.

The Department of Human Resources handles social services. Its contact page routes most needs to county DHR offices and lists the central numbers.

Adult Protective Services answers at 334-242-1350, and the adult abuse hotline at 1-800-458-7214 takes reports of abuse, neglect, or exploitation. DHR asks that suspected abuse be reported by phone to county DHR or law enforcement, never by email. For crisis care, 988 connects to Alabama's crisis system, which now includes six regional crisis centers and mobile crisis teams. The Crime Victims Compensation Commission answers at 334-290-4420 or 1-800-541-9388, and the SAMHSA treatment referral line runs day and night at 1-800-662-4357.

County Phone Numbers Across Alabama

Alabama has 67 counties, and county services are decentralized. Commissions, probate judges, sheriffs, revenue commissioners, circuit clerks, and county school systems each keep their own phones. A few statewide directories cut through that spread. The Alabama EMA county contacts page lists every county's emergency management director with a phone, address, and email, numbers that are hard to find anywhere else.

Sample rows from that page show how specific it gets, like Mobile County EMA at 251-460-8000 and Marshall County EMA at 256-571-7329. For other county needs, ADPH links county health department contacts, DHR links county offices for benefits and protective services, and ALEA lists driver license offices county by county. Court questions route through the Administrative Office of Courts at 334-954-5000 or 1-866-954-9411, which can point you to the right circuit clerk.

Looking Up an Unknown Alabama Number

Two kinds of tools answer the "who called me" question. Official channels confirm facts about a number: whether the area code is real, where the prefix was assigned, whether the number was reassigned. They do not name the caller. Third-party tools try to name the caller or at least flag spam, with mixed accuracy. The full walkthrough, including every approved tool, sits on the Alabama phone numbers page.

Common Scam Calls and How to Report Them

The Alabama Attorney General warned in 2025 that phone scams are getting more sophisticated statewide, with callers pushing victims toward gift cards, wire transfers, and cryptocurrency. The patterns repeat across the state.

• Fake utility shutoff threats demanding instant payment by gift card or payment app
• Jury duty or warrant calls claiming to be a sheriff or clerk
• Government impostors posing as the IRS, Social Security, Medicare, or ALEA
• Bank fraud alerts spoofing the bank's real caller ID
• Grandparent scams using panic and secrecy to demand money
• Storm repair and disaster scams that follow Alabama weather events

Report telemarketing violations at donotcall.gov or by phone at 1-888-382-1222. File spoofing and robocall complaints with the FCC Consumer Complaint Center. The Attorney General's consumer hotline answers at 1-800-392-5658 or 334-242-7335. Utility and telecom complaints go to the Public Service Commission at 800-392-8050.

The PSC accepts complaints by phone, web form, or mail, and its staff can step in when a carrier or utility will not resolve an issue directly.

Community Phone Resources in Alabama

The most useful non-government directory in the state is 211 Connects Alabama, run through United Ways of Alabama. Dialing 211 reaches a trained operator 24 hours a day with access to a statewide database of community services: food, housing, utility help, disaster recovery, elder care, and disability services.

It works three ways: dial 211, call or text 888-421-1266, or text your ZIP code to 898-211. Hearing-impaired callers can dial 711 and ask to be connected to 211 Connects Alabama. Two more statewide lines round out the picture. Legal Services Alabama takes civil legal aid calls at 866-456-4995 in English and 888-835-3505 in Spanish, weekdays 8:30 to 4:30. The Alabama State Bar Lawyer Referral Service caps the first 30-minute consultation at $50.

Phone Numbering Basics for Alabama

Alabama numbers follow the North American Numbering Plan. Every number takes the form NPA-NXX-XXXX: a three-digit area code, a three-digit exchange, and a four-digit line number, all under country code +1. Local calls take ten digits statewide. Toll and long-distance calls take 1 plus ten digits. A few terms come up again and again in area-code notices.

NPA

Numbering Plan Area - the 3-digit area code.

NXX

Central office / prefix code - the 3 digits after the area code.

Overlay

A second (or third) area code added to the same geography, requiring 10-digit dialing.

Rate Center

The telephone-billing geographic unit a prefix is assigned to.

Phone Service History in Alabama

Alabama entered the numbering plan with a single statewide code, 205, in 1947. That lasted almost fifty years. In 1995 the 334 code split off for southern Alabama, one of the first area codes anywhere with a middle digit other than 0 or 1. The 256 code split off for northern Alabama in 1998, and 251 split from 334 in 2001 to cover Mobile and the coast.

Then came the overlays. Code 938 joined 256 in 2010. Code 659 joined 205 in 2019. Code 483 was approved in 2024 and went live over the 334 region in 2026. Each overlay brought mandatory ten-digit dialing with it. Most Alabama landline history traces back to Southern Bell and BellSouth, later folded into AT&T. Today the numbering pool is shared by wireless carriers, cable voice providers, rural cooperatives, and VoIP companies.

Recent Phone News in Alabama

The 483 overlay is the biggest recent change. NANPA's planning letter set customer education for January 2025, permissive ten-digit dialing for July 23, 2025, and mandatory ten-digit dialing for January 23, 2026, with the first 483 prefixes able to activate February 23, 2026. A test number, 483-483-1483, ran from November 2025 through March 2026 so residents could confirm their line routed the new code. In other news, the Attorney General issued a 2025 warning about rising phone scams, and the Department of Mental Health marked three years of 988 with six regional crisis centers open. A February 2024 FCC report on a nationwide AT&T wireless outage counted more than 92 million blocked calls, a reminder that even 911 access depends on carrier networks.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to dial 10 digits everywhere in Alabama?

Yes. Every region of the state now requires the area code for local calls. The 205/659, 256/938, and 334/483 regions require it because overlays share the same territory. The 251 region converted on October 24, 2021, because 988 was already in use there as a prefix. Long-distance calls take 1 plus the ten digits.

Which area code covers my city?

Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Hoover sit in 205/659. Huntsville, Decatur, Florence, and Gadsden sit in 256/938. Montgomery, Auburn, Dothan, and Selma sit in 334/483. Mobile, Daphne, Fairhope, and Gulf Shores sit in 251. Communities near a boundary, like parts of St. Clair or Blount County, can fall on either side.

How do I find a state employee's phone number?

Start with the Inform Alabama agency directory and open the agency's detail page. Most agencies publish a main line rather than direct staff numbers. If you need a specific line that is not posted, a public records request is the formal route, though personal and law-enforcement-sensitive numbers are usually redacted.

Does Alabama have a statewide 311 line?

No. Some cities run their own 311 or non-emergency service lines, but there is no statewide 311. For city issues, call your city hall. For community services like food, shelter, or utility help, dial 211, which does work statewide.

How do I report a robocall?

Register your number at donotcall.gov, then report violations there or at 1-888-382-1222 once your number has been on the registry for 31 days. Spoofed or scam calls can also go to the FCC Consumer Complaint Center and the Alabama Attorney General's hotline at 1-800-392-5658.

What is the 483 area code?

It is the overlay added to the 334 region, covering Montgomery, Auburn, Dothan, and the rest of southeast Alabama. Nobody's existing number changed. New numbers in that region can simply carry the 483 code, and mandatory ten-digit dialing has applied there since January 23, 2026.