SMS character counter
Paste your text. See how many characters it has, how many segments it bills as, and which characters push it from 160 down to 70.
How SMS length is counted
| One segment | Each segment of a longer text | |
|---|---|---|
| GSM-7 (plain text) | 160 characters | 153 characters |
| UCS-2 (emoji, most accents) | 70 characters | 67 characters |
Carriers bill every segment, so one emoji in a 150 character text turns 1 segment into 3. The characters | ^ € { } [ ] ~ and \ are GSM-7 but take two spaces each. Want the long version? Read the emoji tax on your text.
Questions
How many characters fit in one text message?
160 characters, when every character is in the GSM-7 set: plain letters, numbers and common punctuation. One character outside it, like an emoji or an accented letter such as á, sends the whole text as UCS-2 and one segment holds 70.
Why does a 161 character text count as 2 segments?
A text longer than one segment is split, and each part carries a short header that uses 7 characters. So long GSM-7 texts hold 153 characters per segment and UCS-2 texts hold 67. 161 characters needs 2 segments.
Do curly quotes and long dashes count against me?
On many platforms they switch the text to UCS-2. Ready sends them as plain quotes and hyphens whenever that keeps the text in GSM-7, so this counter counts them the way Ready bills them.
How long can one text be?
US carriers reject a text over 25 segments. That's about 3,825 plain characters, or 1,675 with an emoji in it.