Ready to send a message but want to make sure the recipient gets your full message? Here's everything you need to know about the file size and character limits when sending SMS and MMS messages.
What is the character limit for SMS messages?
The character limit for a single SMS message is 160 characters. However, modern phones and networks can take large messages (up to 1,600 characters). They can segment them into 153 character messages sent individually and then rebuilt by the recipient's device. For example, a 162-character text will be sent as two messages: one containing 153 characters and a second with 9 characters.
Outgoing message requests that exceed 1,600 characters will fail. Here's how that looks:
However, you can always break up that content and send more than one message.
If an incoming message exceeds 1,600 characters, you will only receive the first 1,600 characters.
Note: If you include non-GSM characters (such as Chinese script) in SMS messages, those messages have to be sent via UCS-2 encoding. Messages containing any UCS-2 characters are limited to 70 characters and will be concatenated into 67 character message segments (even if the messages contain fewer than 160 characters).
What is the file size limit for messages?
Keep in mind the file size limit for any attachments sent through OpenPhone is 5 MB.
Any files you attempt to send above the limit will fail.
If you have any other questions, please submit a request here. We're happy to help!