How long SMSs can I send?

The length of the SMS is governed by standards and technically it is possible to send a maximum of 160 characters in one SMS. If the message contains more than 160 characters, it can be divided into several individual parts, which are charged separately. Almost all modern phones with such a divided message can work and the recipients display it in its entirety.

The maximum length of 160 characters applies if two rules are followed:

1st message has only one part (max. 160 characters)
The 2nd message contains only characters from the "Basic Character Set" according to the GSM 03.38 standard

If these rules are not followed, the maximum length of one part of the SMS decreases.

SMS without accents and special characters

If the message contains only characters from the 7-bit "basic character set", the SMS can contain a maximum of 160 characters in one section. If this length is exceeded, it is automatically divided into several parts. Each part can contain 153 characters. The remaining 7 characters are used to reconnect the message on the recipient's phone.

The basic character set is extended by the "Extended character set". In addition, this set contains the characters | ^ € {} [~] \. Each of these characters in the SMS takes up space for 2 characters. You can find which characters the basic and advanced character sets contain here.

Number of SMS's	Number of characters
1	160
2	306
3	459
4	612
5	765
9	1377

SMS with accents or special characters

If the message contains any character outside the "Basic Character Set" or its extension, the message encoding is automatically switched to USC2. In this mode, one SMS can contain a maximum of 70 characters. If the message is divided into several parts of 67 characters, where the 3 remaining characters are used to reconnect the message on the recipient's phone.

Number of SMS's	Number of characters
1	70
2	134
3	201
4	268
5	335
9	603