How many characters can I send in an SMS?

A message can be classified as 2 types:

Standard message - contains characters from the GSM Basic Character Set (see 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. Longer messages are definitely possible, however please be aware that exceeding 160 characters will constitute a ‘second’ message. The end user will see this as 1 long 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 ‘part’ as the 7 characters are used up by invisible headers and footers which denote which part of the message is being sent (i.e. Part 1 of 2). For example: If a message is longer than 6 message parts, it will be truncated (see below):

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

GSM Basic Character Set

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_03.38

Note: Line breaks/carriage returns count as 2 characters.

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Can I send Emoji?

Yes you can, 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 (please note that using Emoji changes the encoding of the message to Unicode).

Unicode Characters

The library of Unicode Characters typically increases periodically as new characters are added. While we do automatically convert some common Unicode characters in the New Message page, we will display an alert when new Unicode characters are detected. We can also turn on our 'Smart Encoding' feature for your account to automatically convert some common Unicode characters as you send messages. Please contact our friendly support team if you have more questions or wish to turn on 'Smart Encoding'.

For more information on character limits in SMS messages, check out this Blog post