SMS Character Counter

One SMS holds 160 characters of plain GSM-7 text or 70 characters of Unicode text. A longer message is sent as a multi-part SMS of 153 (GSM) or 67 (Unicode) characters per part, and every part is billed as one SMS.

It contains at least one character outside the GSM-7 alphabet, such as a Hindi or Tamil letter, an emoji, a curly quote, a long dash or the rupee sign. One such character switches the whole message to Unicode. The counter highlights these characters.

In GSM-7 the extended characters ^ { } \ [ ] ~ | and the euro sign use an escape code, so each counts as 2. In a Unicode SMS every character counts as 1, except emoji and some rare symbols, which count as 2.

Yes. Hindi and other Indian languages go out as Unicode SMS with 70 characters per SMS (67 per part). Register the DLT template as a Unicode template and keep the text short, because Unicode uses more parts.

Per SMS part. A 200-character GSM message is 2 parts, so it costs two SMS for every recipient. Keeping a message within one part halves the cost compared with going 1 character over.

No. The counter runs in your browser and your text is never sent to our servers. We only count anonymous page visits and button clicks to see how many people use the tool.