SMS Character Counter

Written byOleh Soloninupdated 25 September 2026

Message text

Result

Segments1
EncodingGSM-7
Characters left80
Characters80
Billable length80
What changed the encodingevery character fits GSM-7

A Cyrillic SMS is half the length

Works out how many segments a message splits into, which encoding it uses, and how many characters remain.

A standard SMS holds 160 characters, but only from the basic GSM alphabet — Latin letters, digits and common punctuation. One character outside it switches the whole message to UCS-2, and the limit drops to 70.

That is why a single emoji or a curly quote pasted from a word processor can turn a one-part 160-character message into three parts — and triple what a bulk send costs.

How to use

Paste the message text.
Check the encoding, the number of segments and how many characters are left before the next one.
If the message slipped into UCS-2 by accident, find the characters responsible in the list and replace them.

Where the next segment starts

In a concatenated message part of each segment goes on a header, so a segment holds 153 GSM-7 characters or 67 UCS-2 characters.

Every row is output from this page's counter.
Length	GSM-7 segments	Length	UCS-2 segments
160	1	70	1
161	2	71	2
306	2	134	2
307	3	135	3
459	3	201	3
460	4	202	4

What this calculator shows

The number of segments and the encoding in use
How many characters remain before the next segment
Exactly which characters pushed the message out of GSM-7

What to keep in mind

Concatenated messages spend part of each segment on a header: 153 characters instead of 160, and 67 instead of 70.
Extended GSM characters — curly braces, tilde, the euro sign — take two positions each.

FAQs

How many characters fit in one SMS?

160 in GSM-7 and 70 in UCS-2. In a concatenated message it is 153 and 67 per segment.

What is GSM-7?

A 7-bit encoding of 128 basic characters: Latin letters, digits, common punctuation and a handful of Greek capitals. It fits 160 characters per segment.

Do emoji count?

Yes, and they force UCS-2. An emoji outside Unicode's basic plane takes two positions: 'Hi 😀' is 4 characters but 5 billable units.

Which GSM-7 characters take two positions?

The extension-table ones: curly and square brackets, tilde, caret, vertical bar, backslash and the euro sign. 'Hello {world} [test] ~ ^ |' is 26 characters but 33 billable.

Why are Russian messages shorter?

Cyrillic is not in the GSM alphabet at all, so every Russian message goes out in UCS-2 at 70 characters per segment.

How do I keep a message in one segment?

Stay within 160 plain GSM characters: swap curly quotes and long dashes for straight ones, avoid emoji, and watch the brackets that count double.

Worked example

An order notification

Input: 66 characters of Russian text

Output: 1 segment in UCS-2, with 4 characters left

Note: Four characters of headroom is one word. Add the name of a pickup point and a ten-thousand-recipient campaign suddenly costs twice as much.

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Result

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