Call screening
A blocked call tells you nothing. lydohanswers the numbers you don't recognize, asks who is calling and what it's about, and texts you the answer. The people you care about ring straight through.
Why screening beats filtering
Filtering answers a question nobody asked: is this call bad enough to kill? Screening answers the one you actually have: is this worth my next two minutes?
19%
of U.S. adults say they generally answer their cellphone when an unknown number calls. Another 67% say they let it ring and check the voicemail.
Source: Pew Research Center, 2020
3.9B
robocalls placed to U.S. phones in August 2026, about 125.4 million a day, or 11.8 calls per person for the month.
Source: YouMail Robocall Index, 2026
2.6M
Do Not Call complaints logged by the FTC in fiscal year 2025, against 258.5 million numbers sitting on the registry.
Source: FTC, 2025
The opinion
Hold us to this one: a screening tool should be judged by how many wanted calls it hands you with a name and a reason attached, not by how many calls it kills. A blocklist scores zero on that test, because a blocked call leaves no evidence of itself. The FCC has let carriers block by default since 2019, and it says plainly that a legitimate caller whose pattern resembles an illegal one can be blocked along with the rest.
So here is the falsifiable part. If every unknown call you get is junk, filtering is enough and you should not pay us anything. If one call in twenty is the school, the clinic, the contractor, or a number you gave out six months ago and forgot, then the 19% of people who answer unknown numbers are not braver than you, they are just paying a toll you have decided not to pay. Screening is how you stop paying it without going dark.
Sources: Pew Research Center, 2020 · FCC. Full list at the bottom of this page.
How the options compare
The question that separates them is not how clever the software is. It is who decides, and what the caller is allowed to say before the decision gets made.
| Approach | Who decides | What the caller experiences | What you get | Cost model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carrier spam blocking | The network, from calling patterns. Since 2019 the FCC has allowed phone companies to block unwanted robocalls by default, based on reasonable analytics. | Labeled Spam Likely, sent to voicemail, or never connected at all. A wanted caller with a pattern that looks wrong gets the same treatment. | Fewer rings and no record of what was dropped. A false positive is invisible to you until someone complains they could not get through. | Usually bundled with the line, with paid tiers at some carriers. |
| Pixel Call Screen | You, after the phone asks. Google's Call Assist answers, asks who is calling and why, and hangs up if it decides the call is spam. | Answered by an assistant on the handset and asked to say who they are and what they want, before the phone rings. | A live transcript as the caller talks, a saved transcript afterward, and the choice to pick up, reply, or hang up. | Included with the phone. Automatic screening is a Pixel feature; manual screening reaches some other Android phones. |
| iPhone Call Screening | You, after the phone asks. Set Screen Unknown Callers to Never, Ask Reason for Calling, or Silence. | On Ask Reason for Calling, an unknown number is asked why they are calling before your iPhone rings. On Silence, they go to voicemail. | The caller's reason on screen, then your call. Silence gives you a voicemail and a line in Recents. | Included with the phone, in the Phone app settings. |
| Human answering service | An operator, working from the script you gave them. | A person picks up, takes a name and a message, and relays it on. | A message by text or email, with the lag of a dispatch queue in between. | Typically per minute or per call, so a noisy month costs more than a quiet one. |
| Lydoh | You, in advance. Rules you write once decide who rings through, who leaves a message, and who gets ended politely. | Reaches your Lydoh number, hears an assistant say what it is, and is asked for a name, a reason, and the best number back. | A text with the name, the reason, and the number, plus a recording and a transcript. VIPs skip all of it and ring your phone. | Flat $39 a month for a personal line, 14-day free trial, unlimited calls. |
Carrier, Google, and Apple rows describe published behavior from the FCC, Google, and Apple support pages listed at the bottom; features change and availability varies by device and country. The Lydoh row describes our own product, and we sell it, so read it with that in mind: the full personal assistant and the price are both public.
On the call
Four things, in the fifteen seconds between the first ring and the text arriving on your phone.
Lydoh texts you
Message for you: Dana from Moto Union called about the 12k service on the Ducati. She needs to move Tuesday to 10 AM and wants a yes or no today. Best number (201) 555-0199. 2:14 PM · 1 min · transcript in your dashboard.
You never heard the phone ring. Dana never heard hold music, never got a voicemail beep, and never had to guess whether anyone would call her back.
Screening rules you set
Screening only works if the rules are decided before the phone rings. Here is a starting policy: eight rules, each one a condition and exactly what happens. Take it whether or not you ever use Lydoh.
Screening policy template
Edit the hours, swap the VIPs, and drop anything that isn't yours. If you run it through Lydoh, these go in your workspace settings and apply to the very next call. If you run it through a person or a phone setting, it still beats deciding while the phone is buzzing in your pocket.
Related reading: an AI personal assistant, what Lydoh does for one person, every feature, and pricing.
FAQ
No. There is nothing to download and nothing to grant permissions to. Lydoh gives you a phone number: forward your existing line to it when you want calls screened, or publish the Lydoh number and keep your real one for the people who already have it. It works the same on an iPhone, an Android, or a landline, because the screening happens on the line and not on the handset.
Never. Lydoh opens by naming itself as your digital assistant, and if a caller asks whether they are talking to a person it says straight out that it is an assistant and offers to help anyway. Your name identifies whose line it is, not who is speaking.
Messages from a screened call arrive on your phone as a text: the caller's name, what they wanted, and the number to call back. Texting your Lydoh number in the other direction is how you give it instructions, so the same thread carries what came in and what you want done about it.
It does not block anything, and that is the point. Your carrier's blocking still runs upstream and kills what it kills. What gets through reaches an assistant that asks who is calling and why, ends the sales calls politely, and hands you the rest with a reason attached. Nothing disappears without a line in your call log.
$39 a month for a personal line, flat, with a 14-day free trial and no per-minute billing. That covers your own Lydoh number, unlimited screened calls, VIP contacts, and recordings and transcripts of everything. Practices run on a different plan at $199 a month.
Call screening finds out who is calling and why before your phone rings, rather than deciding whether to kill the call. With Lydoh, an unknown number reaches your Lydoh number, hears an assistant say what it is, and is asked for a name, a reason, and the best number to call back; that arrives on your phone as a text, with a recording and a transcript in your dashboard. VIP contacts skip all of it and ring your phone the way they always did. The difference from a blocklist is the evidence: a blocked call leaves none, a screened one leaves a name and a reason.
On iPhone it is the Screen Unknown Callers setting, with three choices: Never, Ask Reason for Calling, or Silence. On Ask Reason for Calling, an unknown number is asked why they are calling before your iPhone rings. On Silence, the call goes to voicemail and leaves a line in Recents. That is Apple's own description on its Manage unknown callers support page, and what your phone offers depends on the version of iOS it is running, so check the setting on the handset itself.
Yes, and the phone in your pocket probably has one already. Carrier spam blocking is usually bundled with the line, Pixel Call Screen is included with the phone, and iPhone's Screen Unknown Callers sits in the Phone app settings at no extra cost. Lydoh is $39 a month, and what it adds is the caller's name and their reason texted to you, a recording and a transcript of every call, VIPs who ring straight through, and rules you write once instead of decisions made while the phone is buzzing. If the free options already hand you what you need, do not pay us anything.
Sources
Fourteen days free. Your own number in minutes, and I'll find out who's calling so you don't have to.
