Free SMS Length Calculator

All phone carriers internationally measure text messages in character batches called segments. Segments are typically 160 characters or 70 characters, depending on the encoding type.

Generally, most messages use the standard of GSM-7 encoding, and have up to 160 characters per segment.

How length influences your messaging cost*:

• 0 – 160 characters – 1 segment and charged as a single message
• 161 – 306 characters – 2 segments and charged as two messages
• 307 – 459 characters – 3 segments and charged as three messages
• 460 – 612 characters – 4 segments and charged as four messages
• 613 – 765 characters – 5 segments and charged as five messages
• 766 – 918 characters – 6 segments and charged as six messages
• 919 – 1,071 characters – 7 segments and charged as seven messages
• 1,072 – 1,224 characters – 8 segments and charged as eight messages
• 1,225 – 1,377 characters – 9 segments and charged as nine messages
• 1,378 – 1,530 characters – 10 segments and charged as ten messages

*Assuming GSM-7 encoding

These are commonly-used characters that will change your message encoding type from GSM7 to unicode, which will lower your segment character count from 160 to 70 characters per segment.

Emojis (Partial List):

😀 😁 😂 🤣 😃 😄 😅 😆 😉 😊 😋 😎 😍 😘 🥰 😗 😙 😚 🙂 🤗 🤩 🤔 🤨 😐 😑 😶 🙄 😏 😣 😥 😮 🤐 😯 😪 😫 😴 😌 😛 😜 😝 🤤 😒 😓 😔 😕 🙃 🤑 😲 🙁 😖 😞 😟 😤 😢 😭 😦 😧 😨 😩 🤯 😬 😰 😱 🥵 🥶 😳 🤪 😵 😡 😠 🤬 😷 🤒 🤕 🤢 🤮 🤧 😇 🤠 🤡 🥳 🥴 🥺 🤥 🤫 🤭 🧐 🤓 😈 👿 👹 👺 💀 👻 👽 🤖 💩 😺 😸 😹 😻 😼 😽 🙀 😿 😾

Non-Emoji Unicode Characters:

¢ ¦ ¨ © ª « ¬ ® ¯ ° ± ¹ ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¸ ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¾ À Á Â Ã È Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ð Ò Ó Ô Õ × Ù Ú Û Ý Þ á â ã ç ê ë í î ï ð ó ô õ ÷ ú û ý þ ÿ

The SMS length calculator looks at each character in your message to identify it's encoding type and the overall message length. Based on the encoding type and length, the total number of segments used is determined.

If your message uses GSM-7 encoding and has 157 characters, it's less than the 160 character limit for the first segment, so it is just a single segment.

If your message is a total of 173 characters, it pushes over the 160 character limit, resulting in 2 message segments.

The SMS length calculator looks at each character in your message to identify it's encoding type and the overall message length. Based on the encoding type and length, the total number of segments used is determined.

The two types of SMS encoding used by TalkerIQ are:

When you send SMS messages with TalkerIQ, we will automatically use the most compact encoding possible. If you only use GSM-7 characters, your messages will be encoded at GSM-7. If any non GSM-7 characters are included, your entire message will be encoded at UCS-2, which limits each message segment to 70 characters each.

Using TalkerIQ, your per message rate is based on three different criteria:

• The length of your message in segments
• The destination country of the recipient
• Your messaging plan

The following characters are part of the GSM7 character set:

GSM7 Extension Characters (counted as two characters):

Your message splits as soon as you exceed the per-segment limit of the active encoding type. For GSM-7, the first segment allows 160 chars; with concatenation overhead, each additional segment effectively allows 153 chars. For Unicode (UCS-2), the first segment allows 70 chars; each additional segment effectively allows 67 chars.

Yes. Characters like ^, {, }, [, ], |, ~, and € belong to the GSM-7 extension table and count as two characters toward your total. One extension character can push an otherwise GSM-7 message closer to the limit.

• Remove emojis and non-GSM characters to keep encoding at GSM-7.
• Keep the message under 160 GSM-7 characters (or 70 if Unicode is necessary).
• Watch for extension characters (€, ^, {, }, [, ], |, ~) since each counts as two.
• Use links sparingly—shorten URLs to reduce length.