If you spent any part of the last twenty years phoning family abroad from a PC or a mobile, there is a good chance Skype was how you did it. Microsoft’s successor to MSN Messenger became the default way to keep in touch across borders, with international rates that undercut the mobile and landline networks by a mile.
That ended in May 2025. Microsoft retired Skype and pointed everyone at Teams, and with it went the simplest pay-as-you-go way of calling a real phone number overseas from the UK.
Cheap, and even free, international calls did not have to die with it. This guide covers what changed, what your options are now, and how to keep calling landlines and mobiles abroad without an app, a contract or a monthly fee.
Why Skype went
Nothing went badly wrong. The market simply moved on. Video calling became something every phone does out of the box, and the pandemic pushed Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft’s own Teams into everyday use. Teams took over as Microsoft’s flagship, and Skype, always a product of the 2000s, quietly ran out of road.
What most people used Skype for at the end was one specific thing: cheap calls from a computer or phone to an ordinary telephone number in another country. That is the gap it left.
The apps only get you halfway
WhatsApp, FaceTime and Messenger are fine if the person you are calling has the same app, a smartphone and a decent data connection. Plenty of people you want to reach do not: an elderly parent on a landline, a relative with a basic handset, a business, a clinic, a hotel. For those calls you still need to dial a real number, and that is where the networks charge whatever they like. Standard international rates from UK mobile contracts routinely run to more than a pound a minute.
Calling a real number abroad for pennies
Cherry Call is a UK access-number service. You do not download anything. You dial our access number from your registered UK landline or mobile, then the international number, and the call goes through at our rate instead of your network’s. It works from any UK phone, including the one on the wall.
There are two ways to use it.
1. Prepaid: from 1p a minute
Register an account online, add the UK number you will be calling from, and top up by PayPal (minimum £5). Then dial 0161 328 7777 followed by the full international number. Your credit is used only while you are on the call, it never expires, and there are no monthly fees or contract terms. Top up again whenever you like from your account.
Rates vary by country. Check the A to Z rates table, or pick a country from the home page to see the exact cost per minute to landlines and mobiles.
2. Free: use your inclusive minutes
This is the part Skype never managed. If your landline or mobile plan includes calls to 0845 numbers, you can call our free international calls number, 0845 222 6666, then dial the country code and the number you want. The call to us comes out of your inclusive minutes, so it costs you nothing extra. If your plan does not include 0845 calls, you pay 5p a minute plus your network’s access charge, and nothing to us.
Not every country is on the free service, and the destinations covered are listed on the free calls page.
Which one should you use?
If you have inclusive 0845 minutes and the country is covered, use the free service. If you call a lot of different countries, or you want mobiles as well as landlines at the lowest rate, set up the prepaid account. Many people use both: free for the regular call home, prepaid for everything else.
Moving over from Skype
There is nothing to migrate. Skype credit was Microsoft’s and is gone; a Cherry Call account starts fresh with whatever you top up. The only things you need are the phone you will call from and the numbers you dial, which will be the same full international numbers you used in Skype, starting with 00 or + and the country code.
If you used Skype for a business number rather than for calling out, that is a different problem: you need a UK virtual landline and a number transfer, which our sister company Planet Telecom handles for businesses at planet.uk.