Free tool
Why did that text cost three credits?
Type or paste a message. This counts the segments it will really be split into, shows which encoding it is using, and names the characters pushing it over, which is usually a curly quote pasted in from a word processor.
- Characters
- 0
- Encoding
- GSM-7
- Characters left in this segment
- 0
- Segments · credits
- 1 · 1
Forcing UCS-2
These characters are not in the GSM-7 set, so the whole message drops to 70 characters per segment:
Replacing them with plain equivalents (a straight quote, a hyphen, no emoji) usually cuts the cost of the send in half or better.
How SMS billing really works
A plain-text message using only the standard GSM-7 alphabet fits 160 characters in one segment, and one segment costs one credit. Go over that and the message is split, but the per-segment limit drops to 153. The missing seven characters are the header that tells the receiving phone how to reassemble the parts.
If the message contains any character outside GSM-7, the whole message switches to UCS-2 and the limits become 70 characters for a single segment and 67 for each part of a longer one. One emoji in a 150-character message therefore takes it from one credit to three.
The usual culprits
Curly quotes and apostrophes, em dashes and en dashes, ellipsis characters, and emoji. Almost all of them arrive by pasting from Word, Google Docs or a design tool, which silently substitute them for the plain versions you typed. The message looks identical and costs three times as much.
Note that a few characters (square and curly brackets, the backslash, the tilde, the caret and the euro sign) are in GSM-7 but take two character slots each rather than one.
What this means for your bill
Each segment draws 1 credit and an MMS draws 2. Rates start at 1.99¢ a text. See pricing, or work out a monthly figure with the cost calculator.