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The text messaging charges are dependent on the type of message encoding. There are two types of message encoding which are: GSM-7 and UCS-2.
Let’s see what constitutes these encoding methods in simple terms:
1. Any message that contains only text characters falls under GSM-7.
2. Any message that contains emojis and special characters falls under UCS-2.
3. A text message that is a combination of both text and emojis/special characters will also fall under the UCS-2 category.
You can find the list of UCS-2 special characters here.
NOTE:
If you use Unicode characters (emojis and special characters), the message encoding type will change from GSM-7 to Unicode and the message segment length will reduce to 70 characters.
| Message | Type | Characters used in message | Encoding | Max characters/ message |
| Hello – good morning | Text | GSM Standard | GSM-7 | 160 |
 | Emoji | Unicode | UCS-2 | 70 |
 | Unicode | Unicode | UCS-2 | 70 |
How do Carriers (ATT, T-Mobile, Verizon) Charge for Text Messages?
Text message charges are based on the number of segments in which the message gets delivered.
For a GSM-7 encoding, a text message containing less than 160 characters will cost you 1 credit. A message with characters between 160 and 306 will be segmented into two and will cost you 2 credits.
For UCS-7 however, a text message containing less than 70 characters will cost you 1 credit and a message with characters between 70 and 137 will be counted as 2 credits.
You can refer to the table below to understand how each message will be segmented based on the number of characters.
NOTE:
The second message segment will only have 153 characters because 7 of the 160 characters will be used for a header in the backend. This header will help the carrier identify that the message segments need to be sent together. All the subsequent message segments also follow this pattern.
| Message Length(GSM-7) | Message Length(UCS-2) | Segments(in numbers) | Charged as |
| 0 – 160 characters | 0 – 70 characters | 1 | Single credit |
| 161 – 306 characters | 71 – 137 characters | 2 | Two credits |
| 307 – 459 characters | 138 – 204 characters | 3 | Three credits |
| 460 – 612 characters | 205 – 271 characters | 4 | Four credits |
| 613 – 765 characters | 272 – 338 characters | 5 | Four credits |
| 766 – 918 characters | 339 – 405 characters | 6 | Four credits |
| 919 – 1,071 characters | 406 – 472 characters | 7 | Four credits |
| 1,072 – 1,224 characters | 473 – 539 characters | 8 | Four credits |
| 1,225 – 1,377 characters | 540 – 606 characters | 9 | Four credits |
| 1,378 – 1,530 characters | 607 – 673 characters | 10 | Four credits |
Images are charged in the following manner:
| Image | Text | Charged as |
| 1 Image | No Text | Four credits |
| 1 Image | <=160 Character | Four credits |
| 1 Image | >160 <=306 Character | Four credits |
FAQs
Each character in a message is looked into to determine its encoding type and overall message length and calculates the total number of segments in the message.
GSM-7 and UCS-2 are types of message encodings. A message is a GSM-7 type if it only uses text characters. A message is a UCS-2 type if it uses only emojis or emojis with text. The type of message encoding will determine message segmentation, which in turn will determine how much a message will cost.
The message will fall under UCS-2 encoding and hence a message with more than 70 characters will be segmented into 2.
Regardless of whether the message is less than 160 characters the presence of emoji would make it fall under the UCS-2 category.
If your message is too long Emitrr will send the SMS as an MMS so that it saves you cost as the credits will be capped at 4.
4 credits will be used when you send an image and text together.