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Traditional text messaging, with the widest device reach of any channel. Used as automatic RCS fallback, or as standalone delivery where legacy reach is the requirement.

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How SMS and MMS pricing works

Every message is priced as two components stacked together:
  1. Carrier surcharges — passed through at cost from US mobile carriers (Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, U.S. Cellular).
  2. Tied platform fee — routing, delivery, orchestration and compliance. Flat across all carriers and both directions.
All-in = carrier surcharge + Tied platform fee. Throughout, MT means outbound and MO means inbound.
The Tied platform fee is the same for every number type. $0.00747 per SMS segment. For MMS, $0.01980 outbound and $0.01485 inbound. What changes between 10DLC, toll-free and short code is the carrier surcharge and the number rental — not our fee.

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SMS — per segment

A message of up to 160 GSM-7 characters or 70 Unicode characters fits in one segment. Longer messages use 153 GSM-7 characters or 67 Unicode characters per segment, and every segment is billed. Emoji and curly quotes can switch a message to Unicode. Braces, brackets and the euro sign count as two GSM characters each, while accented letters in the GSM alphabet stay in GSM. Emoji count as two Unicode characters. SMS segments allow up to 160 GSM-7 characters or 70 Unicode characters, then 153 GSM-7 or 67 Unicode characters per segment for longer messages. Braces, brackets and the euro sign count as two GSM-7 characters; accented letters in the GSM alphabet stay in GSM-7; emoji count as two Unicode characters. A 140-character message uses one GSM-7 segment or three Unicode segments. SMS segments allow up to 160 GSM-7 characters or 70 Unicode characters, then 153 GSM-7 or 67 Unicode characters per segment for longer messages. Braces, brackets and the euro sign count as two GSM-7 characters; accented letters in the GSM alphabet stay in GSM-7; emoji count as two Unicode characters. A 140-character message uses one GSM-7 segment or three Unicode segments. One-off SMS campaign sends use the same platform fee per rendered segment when campaign billing is enabled for your account, following notice at least one billing cycle in advance. Accepted recipients appear on the existing SMS usage line, with the campaign title in usage details. Earlier campaign sends are not billed retroactively. Carrier surcharges are held until a carrier is known.
Standard A2P SMS over 10-digit long codes. Most common for business messaging. Requires 10DLC brand and campaign registration.

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All-in

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Carrier surcharge (at cost)

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MMS — per message

Images, GIFs and audio up to 5MB per message. Billed per message regardless of size.
MMS all-in rates are identical across 10DLC, toll-free and short code — the carrier surcharges and the Tied fee are the same for all three.

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All-in

$0.01980 outbound, $0.01485 inbound, flat across all carriers and all number types.

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Number rental

Every RCS agent also gets its own SMS fallback number, charged at cost with no markup and listed with the agent’s fees on RCS channel fees, not in this table.

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10DLC registration fees

Passed through to The Campaign Registry at cost. Required for all US long code A2P traffic.

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What’s included

  • Number provisioning, maintenance and assignment
  • 10DLC brand and campaign registration support
  • Carrier delivery monitoring, automatic retry and failover
  • Full delivery analytics and opt-out management
  • TCPA and CTIA compliance validation
  • Toll-free verification handling
  • Short code carrier vetting support
  • Migration assistance from existing CPaaS providers

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Notes

  • All prices in USD. International rates vary by destination country.
  • SMS is billed per segment; MMS per message regardless of size, up to 5MB.
  • 10DLC registration is required for all US long code A2P traffic.
  • Test and sandbox traffic is free and unbilled.
  • Per-conversation and per-resolution pricing is also available — see How pricing works.

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Next

Connect SMS and MMS

Registration, compliance, opt-in handling, segments and encoding.

RCS channel fees

RCS falls back to SMS when unavailable — these are the rates it falls back to.