How many characters can I send in an SMS?
There are 2 kinds of SMS:
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Standard message - contains only characters from the GSM Basic Character Set (see table below)
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Unicode message - If a message contains any characters that aren’t in the GSM 03.38 basic character set, the message type will be treated as unicode. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_03.38).
Long Messages
A standard SMS message has a maximum of 160 characters including spaces, carriage returns, line feeds etc.
It is possible to send longer messages, however please be aware that exceeding 160 characters will constitute a ‘second’ message.
The end user will see this as 1 long (concatenated) message on their handset.
When a message is longer than 160 characters, this is referred to as a multi-part message as it contains multiple messages (or multiple-parts).
The total SMS limit then becomes 153 characters per message-part as the phone requires 7 characters to tell it that a message-part is part 1 of 2, part 2 of 2 etc.
Standard English Characters:
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1 – 160 characters = 1 Message
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161 – 306 characters = 2 Messages
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307 – 459 characters = 3 Messages
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460 – 612 characters = 4 Messages
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613 – 765 characters = 5 Messages
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766 – 918 characters = 6 Messages
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919 – 1071 characters = 7 Messages
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1072 – 1224 characters = 8 Messages
Non-GSM (Unicode) characters:
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1 – 70 characters = 1 Message
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71 – 134 characters = 2 Messages
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135 – 201 characters = 3 Messages
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202 – 268 characters = 4 Messages
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269 – 335 characters = 5 Messages
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336 – 402 characters = 6 Messages
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403 – 469 characters = 7 Messages
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470 – 536 characters = 8 Messages
GSM Basic Character Set
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_03.38
Note: Line breaks/carriage returns count as 2 characters.
GSM Extended Character set
The following characters are also available, but they are counted as two characters in the SMS message rather than one:
| , ^ , € , { , } , [ , ] , ~ , \
Can I send Emojis?
Yes, provided that the recipient network supports it. If the recipient network doesn't support them, they will be stripped out. Emojis are counted as 2 unicode characters each.
Do spaces count as characters?
Yes, spaces do count as characters.
Unicode Characters - Other things to know
There are some common annoying characters that are considered unicode that we automatically replace to save your message from being charged as unicode. They are almost all created by Microsoft Word, Outlook etc.
Examples are:
