Robocalls by State: Where They Hit Hardest in 2026

Robocalls are not distributed evenly across the country. If you live in metro Atlanta, you almost certainly get more spam calls than someone in rural Vermont — not by a small margin, but by a multiple. The YouMail Robocall Index, which has tracked U.S. robocall volume monthly since 2015, consistently shows the same handful of states near the top of the per-capita rankings year after year: Georgia, Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina. At the bottom, just as consistently: Vermont, Wyoming, Maine, Alaska, and North Dakota.

This post breaks down what the public data actually shows, why the rankings cluster the way they do, and what to do about it depending on where you live. We've avoided fabricating month-specific numbers — robocall volume shifts week-to-week and the YouMail index updates monthly — but the relative ordering of states has been remarkably stable across 2023, 2024, and 2025, and there's no reason to expect 2026 to look fundamentally different.

How the data is actually measured

Before we get to the rankings, it's worth being honest about the data. The widely-cited 'Americans get 50 billion robocalls a year' figure comes from YouMail, which estimates national volume by extrapolating from the calls hitting its own user base of several million subscribers plus carrier-level signal it ingests. It's the best public estimate available, but it is an estimate. The FCC and FTC publish their own datasets — primarily complaints and enforcement actions — which capture a different slice: the calls that bothered someone enough to report them.

All three sources broadly agree on which states get the most robocalls per capita, which is what gives the rankings their credibility. When YouMail's call-volume index, the FTC's complaint volume, and the FCC's enforcement targeting all point at the same handful of states, you can be reasonably confident the pattern is real even if any single month's number is noisy.

The top 10 states (roughly, based on multi-year averages)

Here are the states that have most consistently appeared in the top tier of robocalls-per-capita across YouMail's 2023-2025 monthly reports. Treat this as a stable cluster, not a precise ranking — months 4 and 7 routinely swap, and the gap between #1 and #5 is usually within 10-20%.

1. 01Georgia — Atlanta-area area codes (404, 470, 678, 770) are some of the most-spoofed in the country, and Georgia has appeared at or near the top of YouMail's per-capita ranking in most months of 2023, 2024, and 2025.
2. 02Texas — Major metros (Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Austin) plus a large total subscriber base mean Texas is consistently in the top three by both raw volume and per-capita rate.
3. 03Louisiana — New Orleans and Baton Rouge area codes get heavily spoofed; the state also routinely reports high per-capita complaint rates to the FTC.
4. 04Florida — Large retiree population is a known target for Medicare, Social Security, and grandparent scams, which inflates both call volume and complaint counts.
5. 05Mississippi — Smaller absolute volume but very high per-capita rate; rural states with a single dominant area code see heavy spoofing of that code.
6. 06Alabama — Pattern matches Mississippi: heavy spoofing of in-state area codes plus a population that's older than the national median.
7. 07South Carolina — Charleston and Columbia area codes routinely show up in spoofing-pattern reports; the state has appeared in YouMail's top 10 every month we checked.
8. 08Tennessee — Nashville's 615 area code is one of the most-spoofed in the Southeast, and Memphis adds significant volume.
9. 09Arkansas — Smaller market but consistent per-capita ranking; FTC complaint data routinely places it in the top 15.
10. 10North Carolina — Charlotte and the Research Triangle metros push raw volume up; the state has slid into and out of the top 10 in different months but is reliably top 15.

What jumps out: this is the American Southeast, almost top to bottom. The cluster isn't random.

Why the Southeast gets hit hardest

There's no single explanation, but the public data and the way spoofing economics work point at several honest hypotheses. None of these are independently 'studied' to the point of being settled fact — be skeptical of anyone who claims a single neat explanation — but together they account for most of the pattern.

1. Area code spoofing concentrates on a handful of codes

Robocallers spoof caller ID to make their calls look local — what the industry calls 'neighbor spoofing.' The more recognizable a metro area code is, the more often it gets used as a spoofed source. Atlanta's 404 and 770, Nashville's 615, Dallas's 214 and 469, and Houston's 713 are all extremely recognizable codes that get reused over and over by spoofing operations targeting numbers everywhere. When you live in those metros, you receive an unusual share of those calls back because the caller IDs look like they're coming from a neighbor — even when the real call originates overseas.

2. Older populations are scam targets

Florida is the obvious case: it has the highest median age of any U.S. state by some measures, and several Southern states (Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Arkansas) rank higher than the national median. Scam operations — Medicare advantage, Social Security 'suspension,' health-insurance, IRS impersonation, grandparent emergency scams — specifically target older subscribers because the conversion economics are better. Higher concentrations of likely targets in a state mean more dials per capita to that state.

3. Number-list churn and recycling

Phone numbers in fast-growing metros get recycled and resold more often. When you move to Atlanta or Dallas and pick up a new local number, there's a non-trivial chance that number was previously held by someone whose phone habits put it onto dozens of marketing lists. The new owner inherits the call volume — sometimes years of it. Slower-growing rural states have less number churn, so fewer 'used' numbers in circulation.

4. Business density and small-business call patterns

Some of what gets counted as 'robocalls' is technically legal: collection calls, debt-buyer dialer outreach, insurance prospecting, political dialing. States with a lot of small-business activity, high consumer credit-card balances, and active political markets (the Southeast checks all three boxes during presidential cycles especially) draw more of this legal-but-annoying outbound dialing. It's not the same as overseas-originated illegal scam volume, but it adds to the total counted by YouMail.

The states that get the fewest robocalls

On the other end, the same handful of states show up at the bottom of the YouMail per-capita rankings month after month: Vermont, Wyoming, Maine, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and New Hampshire. The reasons are roughly the inverse of the top-10 explanations.

• Smaller, more stable populations mean less number recycling and less list churn.
• Less-recognizable area codes (Wyoming's 307, Alaska's 907, Vermont's 802) are spoofed far less often because they don't look 'local' to dialing pools targeting people in major metros.
• Younger demographics in some of these states (North Dakota's median age is well below the national median, for instance) make them less attractive targets for retirement-focused scam categories.
• Lower business density means less legal-but-aggressive outbound dialing (debt collectors, insurance prospecting) originating from these states or being directed at their consumer markets.

If you moved from Atlanta to Burlington, you would experience a real drop in spam-call volume — not just an emotional one. The data backs it up.

What the FCC and FTC enforcement data adds

The FCC's Enforcement Bureau, under the TRACED Act, has aggressively targeted large robocall operations since 2022 — issuing record civil penalties to a handful of repeat offenders (including operators connected to auto-warranty, student-loan-relief, and health-insurance scam campaigns). The FTC's Consumer Sentinel reports break consumer complaints down by state and consistently show the same Southeast-heavy distribution that YouMail does.

Two notes on the enforcement data. First, it lags reality by years — the operations the FCC fines today are usually the operations that were dialing peak volume two or three years earlier. Second, FCC fines are notoriously hard to collect; the actual deterrent effect of a $300M judgment against a shell-company gateway provider is debated. None of this changes the geographic story, but it's worth knowing if you're reading FCC press releases and wondering why the call volume hasn't dropped.

What to do depending on what state you're in

The defenses themselves don't change by state — every recommendation in our cornerstone spam-call guide applies everywhere — but the urgency and the configuration do.

If you live in a top-10 state (GA, TX, LA, FL, MS, AL, SC, TN, AR, NC)

You're getting hit hard enough that the free baseline alone won't be enough. Specifically:

1. 01Turn on your carrier's spam labeling immediately if you haven't. Verizon Call Filter, AT&T ActiveArmor, T-Mobile Scam Shield — all free, all do measurable work. This is non-optional in the Southeast.
2. 02Add a third-party blocker. Nomorobo ($1.99/mo) or Hiya (free tier) handle the long tail of known-bad numbers your carrier's database misses. In high-volume markets, the database overlap matters.
3. 03If your number is on a business card, on Google, or otherwise public — and especially if you're a realtor, contractor, healthcare provider, or anyone whose phone is part of how you work — add AI call screening. In the Southeast, the volume of unknown calls is high enough that triaging them with a screening service materially improves your day. Google Call Screen (free on Pixel) or CallerFilterPro work on this layer.
4. 04Register on donotcall.gov even though scammers ignore it. It will reduce legitimate-but-annoying telemarketing, and political dialing in the Southeast is heavy enough that any reduction helps.

If you live in a mid-pack state (most of the country)

The free baseline plus a single layer above it is usually enough. Turn on carrier labeling, register with the FTC, and add either Hiya free or Nomorobo if you want the known-bad blocking tighter. AI screening is worth it if your phone is part of your work, but not strictly necessary for personal use.

If you live in a bottom-10 state (VT, WY, ME, AK, ND, SD, MT, NH)

Carrier labeling alone solves most of the problem for most people. Register with the FTC. Don't pay for tools you don't need. If you're still getting too many spam calls despite low state volume, it usually means your number specifically has ended up on heavily-traded lists — at which point a third-party blocker is the right next step, but you probably don't need to layer AI screening on top.

What changes in 2026

STIR/SHAKEN authentication coverage continues to expand, which has measurably reduced certain categories of domestic spoofing (calls originated by U.S. VoIP services trying to spoof major-carrier numbers). The gap is overseas-originated traffic and traffic through smaller gateway providers, which is most of what people experience as 'spam.' The FCC's enforcement push is real but slow. None of this is on track to dramatically change the geographic distribution — Georgia and Texas will almost certainly still lead the per-capita rankings throughout 2026, and Vermont will almost certainly still be near the bottom.

The honest read: spam call volume nationally has plateaued at roughly 50 billion a year, and the per-state distribution is structural enough that a year of TRACED Act enforcement isn't going to move it much. If you want fewer spam calls, your best lever is the defense stack on your own phone, not waiting for the volume to drop.

Bottom line

Robocalls cluster in the Southeast for reasons that are mostly structural: heavily-recognized area codes get spoofed more, older populations get targeted more, fast-growing metros recycle numbers more, and small-business and political dialing add to the legal-but-annoying baseline. Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and the rest of the top-10 cluster have all sat near the top of YouMail's per-capita rankings for years and almost certainly will for 2026. Vermont, Wyoming, and the rest of the bottom-10 cluster have sat near the bottom for the same reasons, inverted.

Wherever you live, the defenses are the same — carrier labeling, FTC registration, a third-party blocker if you want tighter filtering, and AI call screening if your phone is part of how you work. The difference is how aggressively you should layer them. If you're in metro Atlanta or Houston, layer hard. If you're in Burlington or Cheyenne, the free baseline is probably enough.