Free tool
SMS segment calculator
- Encoding
- GSM-7
- 160 characters in one SMS
- Characters
- 106
- count as many
- SMS parts
- 1
- the message is not split
- Left in this part
- 54
- of 160 characters
Why 160 becomes 153
An SMS holds 140 bytes. At seven bits per character that is 160 characters, the limit most people know.
A longer text is split into parts. Each part has to tell the phone how to put the parts back together, and that header takes the room of 7 characters. That leaves 153 characters per part, so a message of 161 characters becomes two parts.
What turns a message into UCS-2
One character outside GSM-7 is enough to send the whole message as UCS-2. One SMS then holds 70 characters, and each part 67.
The usual causes are emoji, curly quotes and apostrophes (’ and “”), long dashes and letters outside the Latin alphabet, such as Sámi, Cyrillic or Arabic. Word processors often insert curly characters on their own.
In UCS-2 the calculator counts UTF-16 units. Most emoji are two units and take two places.
Æ, ø and å cost one character
The Norwegian letters are part of GSM-7, upper and lower case. A Norwegian message of 158 characters with æ, ø and å is still one SMS.
A few GSM-7 characters still take two places: ^ { } \ [ ~ ] | €. They are sent as an escape character plus the character itself. The euro sign surprises people most often.
Questions and answers
Why do 160 characters become 153 when a message is split?
- Each part needs a header that tells the phone how to join the parts. It takes the room of 7 characters.
Do æ, ø and å count as two characters?
- No. They are part of GSM-7 and count as one character each.
What happens when I add an emoji?
- The whole message is sent as UCS-2, and one SMS holds 70 characters instead of 160. Most emoji count as two.
Do I pay per message or per part?
- Per part. At telkit each part is one SMS unit, and the price is per unit. Work out the price in the SMS price calculator
How long can an SMS be?
- telkit accepts messages of up to 1071 characters. A longer message is refused, never cut.
The character tables and limits come from 3GPP TS 23.038 (formerly GSM 03.38).
Send the message with telkit
One API call sends the SMS, and the answer shows the price.