Amazon / Communication / TEXTNOW: CALL AND TEXT
REVIEW
This isn't the TextNow you came looking for.
A $7 third-party republish of a famously free app, listed on the Amazon Appstore by a developer with no connection to TextNow Inc. The branding is borrowed; the value isn't.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 10, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
TextNow: Call and text
OPEN WORLD GAMES A49
OUR SCORE
2.5
AMAZON
★ 3.2
PRICE
$7.00
The Amazon Appstore has a long-running quality problem with third-party republishers, and this listing is a textbook example. TextNow — the genuine one — is one of the better-known free communications services in North America: a hundred-million-user VoIP app that hands out real US and Canadian phone numbers in exchange for in-app ads, with an optional cheap SIM-card upgrade for cellular fallback. It has been free since 2009. The company is in Waterloo, Ontario, and its first-party apps live on the App Store and Google Play.
What sits on Amazon under this ASIN is not that. The developer is “Open World Games A49,” the price is seven dollars, and the rating is 3.2 stars across seven reviewers. None of those numbers match the shape of a legitimate TextNow product. The listing copy describes the real service accurately enough to fool a quick scan, but the publisher line and the price tag are the giveaways.
Charging seven dollars for an app whose entire pitch is that it is free is the giveaway. Fire tablet owners who want TextNow are better served by the web client at textnow.com or by sideloading the official Android APK. Either route is free, first-party, and supportable.
Charging seven dollars for an app whose entire pitch is that it is free is the giveaway.
FEATURES
The pitch on the listing matches the real TextNow's pitch: a free US or Canadian phone number, unlimited calling and texting to US and Canada over Wi-Fi or data, picture and video messaging, your choice of metro-area area code. The screenshots show a familiar messaging UI and the standard dialer-plus-inbox layout TextNow has used for years.
The catch is in the developer line and the price. The publisher is "Open World Games A49" — not TextNow Inc., the Waterloo-based company that has run the service since 2009. The Amazon listing is priced at $7, while the genuine TextNow app is free with ads on iOS, Google Play, and the web, with optional paid add-ons for ad removal and number locking. The actual TextNow Inc. has no first-party app on the Amazon Appstore at the time of writing; Fire tablet owners have historically sideloaded the Google Play version or used the web client.
Whether this app is a thin wrapper around the TextNow web client, a repackaged APK, or something that proxies through TextNow's API at all is not disclosed on the listing.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Credit where it's due — the listing copy is accurate about what TextNow the service does, and a buyer who installs it and gets a working number routed through TextNow's backend will technically have what the page advertises.
That is the most generous reading available.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
Almost everything else. The developer name is the first red flag — "Open World Games A49" is not a communications company, and the suffix pattern is common to Amazon Appstore republishers who push out volume listings of repackaged free Android apps. The $7 price is the second — the real TextNow's revenue model is ad-supported free with $4.99/month for ad removal, and there is no version of the legitimate offering that costs seven dollars one-time on a single platform. The 3.2-star rating across seven reviewers is the third — TextNow's first-party apps carry millions of ratings averaging well above 4.5.
A buyer expecting parity with the iOS or Google Play TextNow experience also won't get account portability guarantees from TextNow Inc., support from TextNow Inc., or the SIM-card MVNO upsell that funds the service. If the number assignment breaks or the account locks, the person on the other end of any support ticket will be the Amazon Appstore publisher, not TextNow.
CONCLUSION
Anyone wanting TextNow on a Fire tablet should sideload the official Android app from APK Mirror or use textnow.com in Silk — both are free, both are first-party, both come with TextNow Inc. on the other end of the support line. Pay seven dollars for this one and you've funded a republisher, not a phone number.