How many characters fit in a text message?
The real SMS limits — 160 characters, or 70 with emoji — why long messages split into 153-character parts, and how to check before you send.
Updated
Tools for this job: Character Counter · Word Counter · Text Cleaner
A single SMS holds 160 characters — except when it holds 70. The difference comes down to which characters you use, and it matters most when you are paying per message, as with bulk texts and reminder services.
160 or 70: the alphabet decides
Text messages use a compact alphabet called GSM 7-bit. It covers the English alphabet, numbers, common punctuation and a set of accented letters. If every character in your message is in that alphabet, one SMS holds 160 characters.
One character outside it switches the whole message to a different encoding (UCS-2), and the limit drops to 70 characters. Common culprits:
- emoji;
- curly “smart” quotes and apostrophes, which phones and word processors insert automatically;
- em dashes (—) and ellipsis characters (…);
- some accented letters and most non-Latin scripts.
A single emoji in an otherwise plain message can therefore turn one SMS into two or three.
Where the numbers come from
An SMS carries 140 bytes of text, which is 1,120 bits. The GSM alphabet uses 7 bits for each character, and 1,120 ÷ 7 = 160. UCS-2 uses 16 bits for each character, and 1,120 ÷ 16 = 70. The limit was never really a number of characters; it is a fixed amount of space, and how many characters fit depends on how much space each one takes.
Why long messages split into 153 characters
A message longer than one SMS is sent as several parts that the phone joins back together. Each part spends a few characters on the information that says how to join them, so a part holds 153 characters in GSM 7-bit, or 67 in UCS-2. A 300-character plain-text message is two parts; the same message with one emoji becomes five.
| Parts | Plain text | With emoji |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | up to 160 | up to 70 |
| 2 | 161–306 | 71–134 |
| 3 | 307–459 | 135–201 |
| 4 | 460–612 | 202–268 |
“Plain text” means every character is in the GSM 7-bit alphabet; “with emoji” covers any message that has switched to UCS-2. The jump that catches people is the first one. Going from 160 to 161 characters does not add one character to your bill; it doubles it.
Characters that quietly cost extra
Even inside the GSM alphabet, a handful of characters take two spaces instead of one, because they are stored as an escape code followed by the character. They are the square brackets, the curly braces, the backslash, the caret (^), the tilde (~), the vertical bar (|) and the euro sign (€). A message with several of them fills up faster than its length suggests.
Accented letters are less predictable than you would expect. The GSM alphabet includes é, è, ù, ì, ò, à, ä, ö, ü, ñ and the German ß — but not á, í, ó, ú, â, ê or lower-case ç. So a French or Spanish message can be plain text or UCS-2 depending on a single word. The only safe approach is to check the actual text rather than guess.
Check before you send
- Paste your message into the Character Counter.
- Look at the SMS line: it says whether the text fits the GSM 7-bit alphabet and how many messages it will take.
- If it has switched to the 70-character limit, look for curly quotes, dashes and emoji. Replacing them with plain quotes and hyphens usually brings it back to 160.
Text copied from a document often carries invisible extras and smart punctuation. Text Cleaner can straighten quotes and strip stray spacing before you count.
If you send bulk or automated texts
Providers bill for each part, so the difference between one part and two is the difference between one price and double, multiplied by every recipient. A few habits keep messages in a single part:
- Count the longest version, not the template. A placeholder such as a first name is replaced by names of different lengths. Test with the longest name and the longest appointment time you are likely to send.
- Watch the names themselves. A customer called Zoë or Seán has a letter outside the GSM alphabet, so that one message is sent as UCS-2.
- Include everything that is added. Opt-out wording such as “Reply STOP to unsubscribe”, your business name and any link all count towards the limit.
- Leave a margin. Aim for about 150 characters rather than exactly 160, so a slightly longer name does not tip the message into two parts.
- Write the template in a plain-text editor. Word processors and phone keyboards turn straight quotes into curly ones as you type.
Why your own phone does not seem to have a limit
Most messages between phones are no longer SMS. iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal and RCS chat send text over the internet and have no 160-character limit, which is why long messages and emoji normally just work. The SMS rules apply when a message actually travels as SMS: texts to and from businesses, verification codes, reminders, and conversations where one side has no data connection. Phones also hide the splitting, showing a long SMS as one message even though it was sent and charged as several. Some phones and networks convert a very long text into a multimedia message instead, which may be billed differently.
Other limits worth knowing
The same counter checks your text against other common limits: 280 characters for a post on X, about 160 for a search result description, 2,200 for an Instagram caption and 3,000 for a LinkedIn post. For essays and articles measured in words, use the Word Counter.
These platforms do not all count the same way. Some count an emoji as one character and some as two or more, which is why the counter shows more than one figure. If a post is rejected as too long when your count says it fits, emoji and other special characters are the first thing to look at.