Is there a real reverse phone lookup that's free?

Not anymore, or at least I haven’t found one. The ones that used to exist are gone or have become paid background services. People are starting to miss the phone book. You can always call the number to see how it is answered…if it is answered. If you have a landline, use *67 before you dial the number and your call with show up as unknown.

I’d start by googling the number and see what comes up. If it’s a spam number, there are sites where the number may be commented on, where people will say if they’ve received calls from that number.

If I get a call from a number and they don’t leave a message, or they leave a message and it’s some spam (like my car warranty is about to expire or something), I block the number so my phone won’t receive calls from it again.

Yes, call your carrier. They are genuine and you have a legal right.
If you have an issue with a caller then you have a right to discuss the details with your carrier. They may not fully divulge the callers details, but will assist you to block if needed.

If you find a site that does that, please post it here. I’d love to have access to that info without being charged.

Of course the methods and equipment exist. It’s free and available which are the matters of degree. The carriers indeed have them, and every lineman or installer directly employed by those companies routinely is in the field with one of these devices in his van or on his belt.

So it is not free . . .“installer directly employed by those companies routinely is in the field with one of these devices in his van or on his belt.”

That’s why it’s relative. Do you know a lineman or installer? It’s free forhim.

This is the one I use:
https://www.anywho.com/reverse-phone-lookup/

@HP not relative; the person could be on unemployment next week by their actions for you.

Show us free reverse phone look-up !

@LuckyGuy, is it free? and can you do the lookup without providing your own name, phone, email, etc?

It leads to Intelius, and so far I haven’t got past the infowall (if I may call it that) on their site, no matter how I get there from various Google hits.

I don’t want to block a legitimate caller, and enough weird stuff has been going on lately that I really could be getting calls from unknown numbers. But spammers are the last thing I want. So thanks for any help.

@Jeruba Yep anything that is from Intelius comes with a charge. What pisses me off is they have you wait and go through all that crap to announce you need to pay for their service. They just want you email and info so they can add it to their stuff.

@Jeruba I did manage to find something that will at least give you notice if it’s possible spam. You can go the verizon white pages and do a reverse phone search but either they don’t give you full detail because they didn’t have it or because there is a fee for the info. They said they could not find out who the number belonged to, but it did state it as low spam risk. The number on my caller ID just showed the word Philadelphia, PA. So it either may be a some sort of donation thing or a call from people using the web. Like I use my google to make calls and even though it goes through my phone, the caller ID people get is just my state or it shows as unavailable.

Search for “spam phone number database”. When the options came up I noticed this one said “free”, but I know that there are others that are free as well.
https://fastpeoplesearch.io/free-reverse-phone-lookup/scammer-phone-number-lookup

I have a lot of experience with this issue. I spent my workdays for years locating people using a web browser and a phone. Often we would have possible numbers for somebody, and wanted to confirm before making the call.

—Googling the number in the format xxx-xxx-xxxx often worked well. We would pore over the results, and sometimes find something like a community newsletter or online forum post confirming the identity of the number’s owner
—We paid for Whitepages and Intelius for a short time. We found they were not worth the fairly small cost. The paid versions were little better than the free.
—The paid service which was worthwhile as Accurint. It was (if I remember correctly) $20-something per month plus $3 or $4 per search. It wasn’t super, but I would call it about 150% as useful as the free options.
—Accurint screens customers. I don’t know exactly the standards, but we had to show we were an attorney’s office with a legit purpose. Every search required affirming that you were using Accurint in an approved way.
—If calls are spam, the caller probably spoofs Caller ID with a fake number, so there’s not much point in going further than a quick Google.

Ok, with the help of comments above, I tried a different tack: not to find out whose number it is, but just to ask if it’s a likely spammer. I put into Google’s search box “Is xxx-xxx-xxxx a spam number?” That question led me here:

https://www.numberguru.com/

I was able to find out where the call originated and that it was rated 80% likely to be spam. That’s really sufficient for me. Number blocked.

I hope I remember this. Thanks so much for all the help.