SMS Character and Segment Counts

When using regular letters and standard symbols, carriers support sending up to 160 characters per SMS. However, when you include special symbols, such as emojis, accented characters, or non-Latin scripts (e.g. Chinese, Arabic) the character limit is reduced to 70 per SMS because these characters require additional data storage on carrier networks.

Details on Character Limits

Regular letters and standard symbols use GSM-7 encoding, which supports up to 160 characters per SMS. However, when you include special symbols—such as emojis, accented characters, or non-Latin scripts (e.g., Chinese, Arabic)—the message is encoded using UCS-2 encoding. This type of encoding reduces the character limit to 70 per SMS because UCS-2 uses more data per character.

Some special symbols, particularly emojis, can count as multiple characters due to their complex encoding. For example, a single emoji might reduce the available character count by up to 4 characters.

Segment Limits

The carrier network supports sending more characters by breaking an SMS into segments. Smarter Contact supports up to 2 segments per SMS:

Cost

While delivered as a single message, the carrier treats each segment as 1 SMS. An SMS with 2 segments costs twice as much and reduces your sending limits, or throughput rate (TPR), by half. For this reason, Smarter Contact clearly shows a counter indicating whether your message will be treated as 1 or 2 SMS. While we do our best to warn users when creating templates, macro expansions (like inserting names or dates) may add up to 1 additional segment.