Arabic SMS character count: why 70 characters, and a counter that shows the parts and cost

An Arabic SMS fits 70 characters; an English one fits 160. Standard SMS uses the GSM 7-bit alphabet, which has no Arabic letters, so any message containing Arabic is sent in UCS-2 encoding instead, and fewer characters fit. Past 70 characters, the message is split into parts of 67, and each part is billed as a separate SMS. Paste your message into the Arabic SMS character count tool below to see its encoding, how many parts it will be sent as, and what the send costs at your price.

• Arabic: 70 characters in one SMS, 67 in each part of a longer one. English: 160 and 153.
• One character can change the encoding. A curly apostrophe, a long dash or an emoji turns an English message into a 70-character one.
• One character over the limit doubles the cost. 71 Arabic characters are sent, and billed, as two messages.
• Spaces, line breaks and diacritics count. So does a brand name typed into the text; the sender name shown above the message doesn’t.

Arabic SMS character count tool

Paste the message exactly as it will go out, with the link and the opt-out line, then add the number of recipients and your provider’s price per SMS part. If the counter finds a character that forces Unicode in an English message, it names it, and offers to replace the look-alikes.

SMS character limits for Arabic and English

Here is how length turns into parts. Each step past a limit adds one more billed message per recipient.

Why Arabic SMS are shorter

One SMS carries 140 bytes of text. The GSM alphabet uses 7 bits per character, so 160 characters fit. Arabic needs UCS-2, which uses 16 bits per character, so 70 fit. When a message is longer, each part gives up a few bytes to a header that tells the phone how to join the parts back together, which is why each part holds 153 or 67 characters instead of 160 or 70.

text140 bytes = 1,120 bits
GSM-7:  1,120 ÷ 7  = 160 characters (153 per part)
UCS-2:  1,120 ÷ 16 =  70 characters  (67 per part)

The switch is all or nothing. A single character outside the GSM alphabet moves the whole message to UCS-2, even if the rest is plain English.

The characters that quietly double your cost

In English messages

• Curly quotes and apostrophes (‘ ’ “ ”), which word processors and phones insert automatically.
• Long dashes (– —) and the ellipsis character (…).
• Emoji. Each one takes two characters in UCS-2, and four with a skin-tone modifier, on top of switching the encoding.
• A non-breaking space pasted from a document or a web page.
• Any Arabic word, or the Arabic comma (،) in an otherwise English message.

The fix is usually a find-and-replace: straight quotes, a hyphen, three full stops. The counter’s “Replace look-alike characters” button does it for you.

In GSM-7 messages: characters that count twice

A few characters are in the GSM alphabet’s extension table and take two characters each: ^ { } \ [ ~ ] | €, and the page-break character. They keep the message in GSM-7 but use up the limit twice as fast.

In Arabic messages

An Arabic message is already UCS-2, so Arabic or Latin digits cost the same, and so do Arabic punctuation marks. What adds length is everything you can see and some things you can’t: diacritics (tashkeel) and the tatweel stretch (ـ) each count as characters. Emoji count as two.

Worked example: a White Friday SMS to 5,000 customers

A hypothetical store sends a White Friday offer to 5,000 customers in Arabic. The first draft is 82 characters:

At 82 characters it is sent as two parts, so the send is billed as 10,000 messages. Cutting the greeting and the call to action brings it to 58 characters and one part:

Whatever your provider charges per part, the shorter Arabic draft costs half as much to send, and so does the English one without the emoji.

How to write Arabic SMS that fit in one part

1. Put the offer first. “خصم 25% حتى الأحد” says more than a greeting and fits easily.
2. Drop greetings and sign-offs. The sender name above the message already says who it is from.
3. Use a short link. A tracked short link on your own domain is shorter than a full URL, and easier to trust.
4. One language per message. An English message with one Arabic word is limited to 70 characters. Send Arabic to customers who prefer Arabic and English to the rest.
5. No diacritics, tatweel or emoji. They add characters without adding meaning.
6. Count before every send. Paste the final version, with the opt-out line, into the counter.

SMS or WhatsApp?

SMS is billed per part, so length matters. WhatsApp Business messages are billed per message, whatever their length, and can carry images and buttons, but the customer needs WhatsApp and must have agreed to hear from you. Compare your SMS price × parts with Meta’s rates in our WhatsApp API pricing guide before you choose the channel for a campaign.

Messages that reach customers at the right moment

We connect SMS, WhatsApp and email to your CRM, so each customer hears from you once, in their language, at the right time. See CRM & Automation, or tell us what you send today.

Sources

• 3GPP TS 23.038 (ETSI TS 123 038 v19.0.0): the GSM 7-bit alphabet and its extension table
• What is the SMS character limit?, Twilio: 160 and 153 in GSM-7, 70 and 67 in UCS-2, and the fallback to UCS-2
• What is UCS-2 character encoding? and What is GSM-7 character encoding?, Twilio
• Can I send and receive emoji?, Twilio Help Center: emoji take two characters, four with a skin tone

Character limits checked on 24 October 2026.