Learn More About Message Segments, SMS Character Counts, and Credit Costs

Overview

In today's mobile communication landscape, understanding the fundamentals of how text messages work is essential. In this article, we'll demystify what message segments are, how SMS character counts impact your messages, and how the cost of your SMS credits is calculated.

What you’ll learn

In this tutorial, we will discuss:

What are message segments and SMS character count?
How the SMS credit cost is calculated?

What are message segments and SMS character count?

A single SMS message technically accommodates up to 160 characters, or up to 70 characters if it includes Unicode characters like emojis or Chinese characters.
As the contemporary mobile landscape supports message concatenation for the transmission of longer messages, messages exceeding 160 characters are automatically divided into segments and seamlessly reassembled upon receipt.

For GSM:
160 characters for each SMS segment.
153 characters for multipart sends (comprising 2+ SMS segments).
For Unicode:
70 characters per SMS segment.
67 characters for multipart sends (comprising 2+ SMS segments).

How the SMS credit cost is calculated?

Calculating how much your text messages will cost depends on two things:

Message length: How long your message is. If it's very long, it might be split into smaller parts.
Where it's going: The cost also varies depending on which country the person you're sending the message to is in.

For any further questions or help, please contact our chat support team or reach out to us at support+marketing@aftership.com.

Updated on: 15/04/2025