# `missing_country`: no country was given, and the input does not carry one

A phone number written in national format (no leading + or 00), or a postal address sent without a country, can only be read against a country, and the request named none.

- Appears in: `reason`
- Billing: Free. Neither an invalid number nor an address that cannot stand as written costs a credit.

Digits alone do not identify a numbering plan: 415 555 0142 is a San Francisco number only if you know it is North American. Spaw never guesses the country from the caller, because an API client running in one country routinely verifies numbers and addresses from another.

Pass country (an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code) with numbers your users typed without a calling code, or store numbers in E.164 so the calling code travels with them.

A postal address answers the same reason when no country reaches the lookup. The address endpoints require the country and refuse a request without one before the lookup runs, so this answer comes from the batch, where an item that names no country falls back to the list-level one and there was none.

**What to do.** Send the country parameter (the region of the form, the billing address, or the known origin of the list), or prepend the calling code before verifying a number.

```json
{
    "valid": false,
    "reason": "missing_country",
    "e164": null,
    "country": null,
    "risk_score": null
}
```

Reference: https://spaw.co/docs/reasons/missing_country