Which state has the rudest callers? (Analysis of over 210K calls)

Our AI receptionists answer thousands of calls a day for small businesses across the country. Every single one gets transcribed.

So we had access to a pretty interesting dataset and a pretty obvious question: which states have the rudest callers?

We pulled 209,937 real phone calls, flagged every instance of profanity in caller speech, mapped each call to a state by area code, and ranked them all.

How we did this (methodology)

We analyzed 209,937 phone calls made to Upfirst AI receptionists between January 2025 and April 2026.

Here is the approach:

1. Every call is automatically transcribed by our system using speech-to-text.
2. We mapped each caller's phone number to a state using its area code (NANP database).
3. We ran keyword matching against the caller's side of the transcript for ~25 common profane terms.
4. We excluded test calls, blocked numbers, silent calls, and any area code with fewer than 50 total calls.

A few caveats:

Our profanity detection is conservative. It catches obvious swear words but could miss hostile tone or creative insults that dodge the keyword list. The true "rudeness" rate is almost certainly higher across the board, but it would be higher everywhere, so the relative rankings should hold. We also only analyzed the caller's speech, not the AI receptionist's responses. (Our AI does not swear back.)

There is an interesting selection bias worth noting. Our customers are small businesses, heavily weighted toward service industries like HVAC, legal, medical, and property management. The callers in this dataset are people calling those kinds of businesses. This is not a random sample of all phone calls in America. It is a sample of people calling small businesses, which may skew the results in ways we cannot fully account for.

How often do callers actually swear?

Before we get to the state rankings, here is the number that surprised us most: only about 1 in 80 callers (1.23%) use any profanity at all.

That is across all 209,937 calls. The vast majority of people calling small businesses are just trying to schedule something or ask a question. They are polite. They say please and thank you. They spell their name when asked.

But that 1.23% is an average. And averages hide some pretty big differences between states.

Which states have the rudest callers?

Alaska tops the list at 6.33%, but with a big asterisk: we only had 79 calls from Alaska area codes (more on that below). Oklahoma is a close second at 4.35%, backed by a much larger sample of nearly 3,000 calls.

Here are the top 10. The "Total Calls" column shows how many calls we had from that state's area codes. Profanity rate is the percentage of those calls where the caller used profanity.

1. Alaska* — 6.33% (79 total calls)
2. Oklahoma — 4.35% (2,945 total calls)
3. New Mexico — 3.97% (2,292 total calls)
4. Hawaii — 2.74% (292 total calls)
5. Idaho — 2.71% (664 total calls)
6. Connecticut — 2.60% (3,043 total calls)
7. Kansas — 2.09% (574 total calls)
8. West Virginia — 1.99% (201 total calls)
9. Indiana — 1.86% (2,318 total calls)
10. Washington DC — 1.79% (2,565 total calls)

There is a big gap between #3 and #4. Alaska, Oklahoma, and New Mexico are in their own tier. Then it drops to the 2-3% range for the rest of the top 10.

We used area codes to determine state, not GPS. Cell numbers are portable, so a 405 (Oklahoma) area code might belong to someone who moved to Portland years ago. This means the data reflects where the number was originally assigned, not necessarily where the caller is sitting right now.

Which states have the politest callers?

North Dakota and Montana. Both had zero profanity in our sample. Not a single call.

1. North Dakota* — 0.00% (82 total calls)
2. Montana* — 0.00% (156 total calls)
3. Vermont — 0.44% (227 total calls)
4. South Dakota* — 0.57% (175 total calls)
5. Utah — 0.61% (983 total calls)
6. Mississippi — 0.66% (605 total calls)
7. Maine — 0.69% (290 total calls)
8. Iowa — 0.70% (570 total calls)
9. Nebraska — 0.71% (561 total calls)
10. Delaware — 0.72% (277 total calls)

The Midwest and mountain states dominate this list. Utah at #5 is notable because it has a large sample (983 calls) and still came in at just 0.61%.

To put it in perspective: an Oklahoma caller is roughly 10x more likely to swear than a Vermont caller.

The full map

Here is every state colored by profanity rate:

And here it is in a table from most profanity to least:

Beyond profanity: patience and hang-ups

Swearing is not the only interesting behavior in the data. We also looked at call duration and hang-up rates.

Which state's callers are the most impatient?

Michigan. 15.7% of Michigan calls are "short calls," meaning the caller hung up before the conversation really got going. Louisiana is second at 12.3%. The national average is around 6%.

Which state's callers stay on the line longest?

Wyoming. The average call from a Wyoming area code lasts 100.6 seconds, which is nearly double the national average of 67 seconds. We are not sure what to make of that, but Wyoming callers seem willing to chat.

And Washington DC?

Shortest average calls (56.9 seconds) among the top 20 states by volume, combined with an above-average profanity rate. Brief and blunt.

A note on sample sizes

Not all states are created equal in this dataset. Florida has 35,499 calls. North Dakota has 82.

States with an asterisk (*) in the rankings had fewer than 200 calls, which means their rates are less reliable and could shift with a few hundred more calls.

Alaska is the most dramatic example. It has the highest profanity rate at 6.33%, but that is based on just 5 profane calls out of 79. One bad afternoon could produce that number. Oklahoma's 4.35% comes from 128 profane calls out of 2,945, which is a much sturdier data point.

On the polite end, North Dakota and Montana both had 0.00% profanity, but with fewer than 160 calls each, we would not bet the house on it. Vermont's 0.44% from 227 calls is the most reliable number among the top 3.

We included all states in the rankings because transparency beats arbitrary cutoffs. But take the asterisked states with a grain of salt.

The outliers

It is always fun to look at individual area codes rather than states (since states contain multiple area codes that can vary quite a bit).

The single rudest area code in the country? 930 (Indiana), where 10.53% of calls contained profanity, followed by 539 (Oklahoma) at 10.28%.

The politest area codes with significant volume? Too many to list. 42 area codes with 50+ calls had a 0.00% profanity rate.

So what?

If you are a small business owner, the practical takeaway is probably just: relax. Only about 1 in 80 callers is going to swear at your receptionist (whether that receptionist is human or AI). And if you happen to run a business with an Oklahoma area code, maybe 1 in 23. But either way, your AI receptionist will keep it cool.