Is B2B cold calling legal in the US?

Yes. A person-to-person call from a salesperson to a business, about a product the business would buy, is legal under federal law without prior consent. Three sets of rules still shape how you do it: the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the FCC rules under it, and state telemarketing laws.

Partly. Under 16 CFR 310.6(b)(7), calls between a telemarketer and a business, to sell goods or services to that business, are exempt from most of the TSR. Before 2024 the exemption was almost complete. The FTC’s final rule published on April 16, 2024 (89 FR 26760, effective May 16, 2024) narrowed it, so the bans on misrepresentation now reach B2B calls too.

The FTC also notes that a call to a workplace to sell an employee something for personal use is not a B2B call, and the full TSR applies. In practice, the TSR now asks the same of B2B callers as any honest seller: describe what you sell, its price and its terms accurately.

The National Do Not Call Registry is for personal numbers. The FTC’s Registry FAQ says business phone numbers and fax lines are not covered, and the TSR’s B2B exemption takes B2B calls out of its DNC rules. The FCC’s DNC rules protect residential subscribers.

The hard case is a mobile phone used for both work and personal life. FCC rules extend residential protections to wireless numbers in many cases (47 CFR 64.1200(e)), and courts decide case by case whether a particular mobile is residential. Many teams scrub every number against the Registry, at least every 31 days as the FTC and FCC rules require of telemarketers who must comply, rather than guess.

• Keep an internal do-not-call list. FCC rules require a written policy, trained staff, and honoring requests within a reasonable time not exceeding 10 business days, for 5 years (47 CFR 64.1200(d)).
• Honor a request not to be called, whatever the number type.
• Scrub against the National Registry and applicable state lists when a number may be personal or mobile.

Yes, in two important ways. First, the consent rules for calls made with an autodialer or an artificial or prerecorded voice apply to calls to mobile numbers no matter who is calling or why (47 CFR 64.1200(a)(1)). Telemarketing calls of that kind need prior express written consent (64.1200(a)(2)). A business mobile is still a mobile number.

Second, the TCPA’s calling-hour and do-not-call protections apply to residential subscribers, which can include mobile numbers. A normal, manually dialed call from a salesperson to a company’s main line or a business landline is generally outside both.

What counts as an autodialer?

In Facebook v. Duguid (2021), the Supreme Court held that equipment counts as an autodialer only if it can store or produce numbers using a random or sequential number generator. Many click-to-dial and power-dialer tools fall outside that definition, but several state laws define autodialers more broadly.

Not to mobile numbers without consent. The FCC treats AI-generated voices as artificial voices under the TCPA, so the same consent rules apply as for prerecorded calls.

In a declaratory ruling adopted on February 2, 2024 (FCC 24-17), the FCC confirmed that AI-generated voices, including voice clones, are “artificial” voices under the TCPA. Calls to mobile numbers using an AI voice therefore need prior express consent, and prior express written consent for telemarketing. A business mobile gets no exemption, because the consent rules for mobile numbers apply whoever is calling. State laws with broader autodialer or consent rules can add further limits.

Two things: a proposed consent rule was struck down, and the rules on revoking consent were rewritten. Neither changes the basic rule for manual B2B calls.

The FCC’s 2023 “one-to-one” consent rule, which would have required prior express written consent to name a single seller, never took effect. The 11th Circuit vacated it on January 24, 2025 in Insurance Marketing Coalition v. FCC.

Since April 11, 2025, FCC rules let people revoke consent by any reasonable means, with words such as “stop” or “unsubscribe” counting automatically, and require callers to honor revocations within 10 business days (64.1200(a)(10)). A separate “revoke-all” rule, under which opting out of one type of message would stop all robocalls and robotexts from the caller, was delayed to January 31, 2027 (DA 26-12). On September 30, 2026 the FCC voted on a Report and Order to replace the revoke-all rule (described here from the FCC’s draft fact sheet; check the final published order): callers may treat an opt-out as covering only the category of message it was given for, and a telemarketing opt-out still stops all telemarketing robocalls. The new rules take effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, which had not happened when we checked on October 6, 2026.

TCPA damages start at $500 per violation and can triple if the violation was willful, and private plaintiffs can sue, often as class actions. Because damages are counted per violation, a small error repeated across a calling list adds up quickly. The FTC can also seek civil penalties for TSR violations, which now include misrepresentations on B2B calls, and some states add their own private rights of action.

Sometimes. Most state telemarketing laws protect consumers or residential lines, which leaves many B2B calls outside them, but there are important exceptions.

At least 18 states set calling hours or days stricter than the federal 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. window, and several cap calls at three per 24 hours on the same subject. Mississippi’s law covers businesses outright, and Florida’s hours and call limit apply even to sellers that are otherwise exempt. Check the called person’s state, not your own.

See the state-by-state table in our guide to cold calling hours by state.

A checklist should cover honesty on the call, how you dial, which numbers you scrub, and when you call. Run it before every campaign, not once a year.

• Identify yourself and your company truthfully at the start of each call.
• Make no misrepresentations about what you sell, its price or its terms (TSR 310.3(a)(2) and (a)(4)).
• Dial manually, or confirm your dialer is not an autodialer under federal and state definitions, before calling mobile numbers.
• Do not use prerecorded or AI-generated voices to call mobile numbers without the required consent.
• Keep an internal do-not-call list and honor requests within 10 business days.
• Scrub numbers that may be personal or mobile against the National Registry, at least every 31 days, and against state lists.
• Call within the stricter of federal hours and the called person’s state hours, in their local time.
• Check state frequency limits, such as three calls in 24 hours on the same subject in some states.
• Keep records of consent and opt-outs.

SalesOne Voice calls are placed by a person in the browser. Before each call, SalesOne checks Do Not Call data less than 31 days old, limits calls to 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the person’s local time plus stricter state rules, and applies global opt-outs and executive touch budgets. These checks run on every call, so the rules do not depend on each caller remembering them. They support your compliance program; they do not replace counsel’s review of it.

Calls placed by a SalesOne SDR follow these rules too: the SDR works inside your workspace, and the same checks run before every call the SDR makes. The SalesOne SDR page, linked below, explains how the seat works.