0
Characters
0
SMS Parts
Count SMS characters, message parts, and detect GSM vs Unicode encoding live.
Paste or type your SMS text above. The counter instantly detects whether your message uses standard GSM-7 encoding or Unicode — triggered by emoji or special characters.
The sidebar shows total characters, SMS parts, characters remaining in the current part, and encoding type. GSM-7 single SMS = 160 chars; Unicode = 70 chars.
Messages over the single-SMS limit split into multiple parts — each billed separately by carriers. Our counter shows exactly how many messages you'll send before you hit send.
Marketing teams use our SMS counter to keep bulk messages within a single part — reducing costs significantly on campaigns sent to thousands of recipients.
Developers building SMS APIs and notification systems use our counter to validate message length and encoding before sending, preventing unexpected multi-part billing.
Support teams sending SMS updates to customers use our counter to craft messages that fit within one SMS — keeping communication costs predictable and controlled.
Our free SMS Character Counter does something most character counters don't: it tells you not just how many characters you've written, but exactly how many SMS messages you'll send — and at what cost. A standard GSM-7 SMS holds 160 characters. The moment you add an emoji, an accented character, or any symbol outside the standard GSM-7 character set, your message switches to Unicode encoding — and your limit drops immediately to 70 characters per message. Our counter detects this switch automatically and updates your part count in real time.
When a message exceeds the single-SMS threshold, it splits into multiple parts. But here's what most people don't know: multi-part messages don't use the full limit per part. A multi-part GSM-7 message uses only 153 characters per part (7 characters are reserved for concatenation headers). Unicode multi-part messages use just 67 characters per part. Our counter tracks total characters, current SMS parts, characters remaining in the active part, and encoding type — all simultaneously, updating live with every keystroke.
For businesses running SMS marketing campaigns, every extra message part is a direct cost multiplier. A 170-character GSM-7 message sends as 2 messages — doubling your per-recipient cost on every send. For a campaign of 10,000 recipients, that's 10,000 extra messages billed. Our SMS counter helps marketers, developers, and customer support teams optimise message length before sending, avoid unexpected multi-part billing, and write SMS copy that fits cleanly within a single message — every time.