See What Your Text Really Costs Before You Send It
One curly quote can cut a text’s room from 160 characters to 70. Paste your message to count its characters and segments and find what’s using them up.
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Type or paste a text to see its segments, encoding and cost.
Why texts split into segments
A text is sent in fixed-size pieces called segments. Plain text uses the GSM-7 alphabet (defined in 3GPP TS 23.038) and fits 160 characters in one segment. A longer text gets split, and each piece gives up 7 characters to the header that puts the parts back in order, leaving 153.
A character outside that alphabet, like an emoji, a curly quote or Korean text, switches the whole message to UCS-2, which fits 70 characters in one segment and 67 per segment after that. Phones show one message, but each segment is billed separately. The full explanation is in our guide to the SMS character limit.
SMS limits at a glance
| Encoding | One segment | Each segment once split | Used for |
|---|---|---|---|
| GSM-7 | 160 | 153 | English and many Western European letters, digits and basic punctuation |
| UCS-2 | 70 | 67 | Emoji, curly quotes, long dashes and scripts like Korean, Japanese and Arabic |
Questions
How many characters are in one text message?
A plain GSM-7 text fits 160 characters in one segment. If it uses any character outside GSM-7, such as an emoji, the limit is 70.
Why is my 150-character text more than one segment?
It probably contains a character outside GSM-7, such as an emoji or a curly quote pasted from a document. That switches the text to UCS-2, where a single segment holds only 70 characters.
What counts as two characters?
In GSM-7, these count as two: ^ { } \ [ ] ~ | €. In UCS-2, most emoji count as two, and some combined emoji count as more.
Does this tool keep my message?
No. The count runs in your browser and nothing you type leaves the page.
Will my carrier or provider count exactly the same?
Usually, but not always. Some providers change certain characters before sending, and multimedia messages are billed differently. Treat this as a close estimate for plain text messages, and send a test to be sure.
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