SMS segment calculator
Paste your text message. See how many segments it takes, which characters are quietly switching it to Unicode (and cutting each segment from 160 characters to 70), and what a send to your whole list will cost.
Count & cost
Segments
0
Characters
0
Per segment
160chars
Left in segment
160
Example rate only. Enter your provider's per-segment price plus carrier fees.
Per message—
This send—
How this is calculated
- If every character is in the GSM-7 alphabet, a single text holds 160 characters. Longer texts are split into segments of 153, since 7 characters per segment go to the header that stitches them back together.
- One character outside GSM-7 (an emoji, a curly quote, an em dash, many accented letters) switches the whole message to UCS-2 Unicode: 70 characters single, 67 per segment when split. Emoji count as 2.
- These GSM-7 characters are legal but count as 2:
^ { } \ [ ] ~ | €(shown in amber). - Segments are filled greedily, and a 2-unit character is never split across segments, matching how carriers bill.
- Fix characters swaps curly quotes, dashes, ellipses, special spaces, bullets and non-GSM accents for plain equivalents. Emoji can't be converted, so remove them yourself to get back to GSM-7.
- Cost = segments × recipients × your per-segment rate. Merge fields like {first} are counted as typed. Real names may change the length, so leave some room.
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