| Type | Per SMS (segment) |
| GSM-7 | 153 characters (7 remaining character slots used for header data) |
| UCS-2 | 67 characters (3 remaining character slots used for header data) |
SMS message length is closely interrelated to the characters used within the SMS.
The main standard for characters used in SMS is the GSM characters. These are the most efficient to use as they don't require difficult encoding and decoding by the systems. With this efficiency the chargeable SMS "segment" that gets transmitted can contain 153 characters.
The SMS itself can be as long as required as the full content is split into these "segment" SMSes to be transmitted individually through the chargeable network and then recompiled to a single SMS on the recipient’s device.
When an SMS contains characters such as Chinese script or emojis, the character type has to be different to take in the additional encoding and decoding complexities. This character set is known as the UCS-2.
This is a less efficient method to send SMS as the chargeable SMS "segment" that gets transmitted can only contain 67 characters.
Where possible you can avoid the cost of the additional "segment" SMSes by removing the UCS-2 characters from the SMS. You can check if the SMS requires encoding your message in GSM-7 is possible, or if UCS-2 is needed by using the following URL:
https://charactercounter.com/sms
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