I've been doing this for about a year now and have run into no issues with the numbers I transfer from carriers. more and more the pure VOIP numbers are not working.

I won't go into recommending any, for reasons I describe in another comment in this thread. I will however not recommend VoIP.ms, they wanted me to do a facial scan and when I refused completely blocked access to my account with no appeal.

I don't recommend any, to be honest. the ones I've tried all have quirks that make them annoying to use, so unfortunately I haven't settled on one I can recommend. that said, $5 USD per number per month is very much the high end you should expect, you can get decent results for much cheaper.

for me the primary motivator is to stay off of cell to avoid cell tower triangulation. the service I use right now actually doesn't even need a 'host' cell number. also, newer phones have multiple eSIM slots that you can rotate easily with the method I describe above, allowing you to further containerize your personas.

its different depending on what you're trying to accomplish. if you're trying to hide from the government, good luck. if you're trying to make it so Walmart and Amazon have no shared information on you, that's very achievable

It is difference. Sim cards can push arbitrary remote code execution to your device from towers.

That gap makes a huge difference