SMS character and segment counter
See how many messages you will be billed for before sending an SMS campaign, and why one Arabic letter or special symbol shrinks the limit.
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Processing and privacy: The result is calculated inside your browser and your data is not sent to any server.
How to use it
- Enter text.
- The result appears straight away and updates as you edit.
- Copy the result, or copy a link that keeps the same values to share it.
How it is calculated
If every character is in the GSM 03.38 alphabet the encoding is GSM-7: 160 units for one message, 153 per part when split, and extension symbols such as € and { } take 2 units. Otherwise it is UCS-2: 70 units for one message, 67 per part, and emoji take 2 units. A symbol is never split across parts.
Example
Result: Message segments: 2; Encoding: UCS-2 (Unicode); Units used: 75.
عميلنا العزيز، طلبك رقم 4521 جاهز للاستلام من فرع الرياض. شكرا لتسوقك معنا.
ع م ي ل ن ا ز ، ط ب ك ر ق ج ه س ت ف ض ش و
Limits and caveats
- Some carriers swap characters such as ç for a GSM look-alike, so the real count can differ slightly.
- Assumes no national language shift tables are used.
Questions about this tool
Why is an Arabic SMS limited to 70 characters?
Arabic letters are not in the GSM-7 alphabet, so the message is sent as UCS-2 at 16 bits per character, which fits 70 characters instead of 160.
Why does the limit drop to 153 or 67 when split?
Each part of a long message carries a header so the phone can join the parts, and that header uses some of the space.
One character switched my English SMS to UCS-2. Why?
Any character outside GSM-7, such as an emoji or a curly apostrophe ’, switches the whole message to UCS-2. It is listed under characters outside GSM-7.