How many characters can I send in an SMS?

There are 2 kinds of SMS:

• Standard message - contains only characters from the GSM Basic Character Set (see table below)

• 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.

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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.

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Standard English Characters:

• 1 – 160 characters = 1 Message

• 161 – 306 characters = 2 Messages

• 307 – 459 characters = 3 Messages

• 460 – 612 characters = 4 Messages

• 613 – 765 characters = 5 Messages

• 766 – 918 characters = 6 Messages

• 919 – 1071 characters = 7 Messages

• 1072 – 1224 characters = 8 Messages

 

Non-GSM (Unicode) characters:

• 1 – 70 characters = 1 Message

• 71 – 134 characters = 2 Messages

• 135 – 201 characters = 3 Messages

• 202 – 268 characters = 4 Messages

• 269 – 335 characters = 5 Messages

• 336 – 402 characters = 6 Messages

• 403 – 469 characters = 7 Messages

• 470 – 536 characters = 8 Messages

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