SMS Character Limit: 160, 153, 70 and Why Emoji Cost More

One SMS segment holds 160 characters of plain text, or 70 if the message contains any emoji, curly quote or other character outside the GSM-7 alphabet. Longer messages split into segments of 153 and 67 characters, and each segment is billed separately.

That single rule explains most surprise texting bills. A 150-character promotion costs one segment until someone pastes it from a document and a curly apostrophe comes along, and then it costs three. Paste your own text into our free SMS character counter to see its segments, encoding and cost as you read.

Your customer's phone stitches the segments back together and shows one message. The carrier and your provider still count every piece.

Each part of a split message carries a small header telling the phone which piece it is and how to put them back in order. That header takes the room of 7 GSM-7 characters, which is why 160 drops to 153, and of 3 UCS-2 characters, which is why 70 drops to 67. So a 161-character text isn't one character over. It's two full segments with room to spare.

• Emoji: One emoji switches the entire message to UCS-2. Most emoji also take the room of two characters, and combined ones (a family, a flag) take more.
• Curly quotes and apostrophes: Word processors and phones turn ' into ’ on their own. It looks the same and costs far more. This is the most common hidden cause.
• Long dashes and ellipses: An em dash (—), en dash (–) or a single-character ellipsis (…) is outside GSM-7. Use a hyphen or three periods.
• Invisible characters: Non-breaking spaces and zero-width spaces come along when you copy from web pages and design tools. You can't see them, but the count can.
• Non-Latin scripts: Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi and others need UCS-2. Plan for 70 characters when you translate a message.

Some characters stay in GSM-7 but count as two because they use an extension table: ^ { } \ [ ] ~ | and €. A text that lists prices in euros uses up its room a little faster.

In SmartyTap, one SMS credit covers one segment and costs 2¢. Here's the same 150-character offer sent to 10,000 people:

The third row isn't an argument against emoji. It's a reason to spend them on purpose. If an emoji helps a message earn more than it adds, keep it, and keep the text under 70 characters where you can.

• Write the offer first and cut everything else. Name, offer, deadline, link is usually enough.
• Count with real values. A long first name or link can push a text that fit in testing over the line for some customers.
• Budget for your business name and opt-out wording. "Brightside: " and "Reply STOP to opt out" are 33 characters together.
• Use a short link on your own domain. Public shorteners save characters but carriers tend to distrust them.
• Type in plain text, or swap punctuation with the button in the counter after you paste.
• Translate with care. A German or French version can run longer, and a Korean or Japanese one drops to the 70-character limit.

Here's a promotion as it might come out of a document, then cut down. The first version contains a curly apostrophe and a long dash, so it's UCS-2, and its 133 characters take two segments of 67.

• Before: Brightside: We’re having our biggest sale of the year — 25% off every bag through Sunday. Shop now: brightside.co/a1b2c3d STOP to end
• After: Brightside: 25% off every bag through Sunday. Shop now: brightside.co/a1b2c3d Reply STOP to opt out

The second version says the same thing in plain GSM-7 and fits one segment with room left. On a list of 10,000, that's the difference between 20,000 credits and 10,000, for the same offer.

Personalization makes the count differ from one person to the next. A first name can run from 2 characters to 15 or more, and a name with a letter outside GSM-7, like Łukasz, can switch that one person's text to UCS-2. If your template sits just under 160 characters, some customers will tip into two segments. Leave a margin of 15 or 20 characters when a message has a name in it, and use a fallback like "there" that keeps the sentence natural.

No. A multimedia message carries an image and is billed as one message at a separate rate rather than per segment, and rates depend on your provider. The MMS glossary entry explains the difference. The limits in this post apply to plain SMS.

SmartyTap's text marketing tools count segments for you. A campaign shows its estimated cost for the recipients it will reach next to your SMS credit balance before you send, so a long message or an emoji doesn't become a surprise. SmartyTap Starter is $20 a month with 250 SMS credits, and Pro is $199 a month (or $1,990 a year) with 2,500. One credit covers one segment and costs 2¢. New workspaces need a paid plan to send, and there's no free trial. See SmartyTap pricing.

Related reading: the SMS segment glossary entry, short code vs 10DLC vs toll-free and abandoned cart text examples with character counts.

One segment holds 160 GSM-7 characters or 70 UCS-2 characters. A message can be longer, but it splits into segments of 153 or 67 characters, and each one is billed.

Often, yes. One emoji switches the message to UCS-2, cutting a single segment from 160 characters to 70. A text under 70 characters still costs one segment, but a longer one costs more.

Some characters take the room of two: most emoji in UCS-2, and ^ { } \ [ ] ~ | € in GSM-7. Invisible characters pasted from another app count too.

Limits depend on the provider, and long texts get expensive before they hit one. For marketing, one or two segments is a sensible ceiling.

Paste your text into a counter such as the free Chargezen SMS character counter. It runs in your browser, shows the encoding and segments, and points out the characters that lower the limit.