Characters in English

Character Limit

Webex Interact, lets you know exactly how many characters you've used up in your message whether you are sending a single SMS or a longer concatenated one.

The standard length of an SMS is 160 characters in Latin symbols (ASCII). It can vary as below depending on the message type, especially if it is a Unicode message or if the message uses any special characters.

A single message with up to 160 characters charges you one SMS. You can send a longer message by concatenating two or more message parts together. If the message is more than 160 characters, 7 characters are used to concatenate the message when it is delivered to the handset.

Standard GSM Characters:

You can send messages up to 918 characters and this long message will use up to six SMS message cost (918 = 153 x 6).

  • One message up to 160 characters
  • Two messages up to 306 characters (153 x 2)
  • Three messages up to 459 characters (153 x 3) and so on up to 918 characters or 6 SMS.

Special Characters:

Special characters like Ā£ and $ signs and some punctuation can take 2 characters, these are known as the extended GSM character set.

Unicode, Symbols and Emoji:

Messages can include special characters (unicode) and have a limit of 70 characters per SMS.

  • One message up to 70 Unicode characters
  • Two messages up to 134 Unicode charters (67 x 2)
  • Three messages up to 201 Unicode characters (67 x3) and so on up to 402 characters or 6 SMS