A pure segment calculator used on the send path. GSM-7 gives 160 characters in one segment and 153 in a multi-part message; anything requiring UCS-2 — one emoji, a curly quote, an em dash, an accented letter — drops that to 70 and 67. A handful of GSM-7 characters cost two positions because they are sent as an escape sequence, and are counted as two.
Also called: sms cost · why did one emoji cost more · text message billing · segments
- 1The body is iterated by code point, so a surrogate-pair emoji is billed as two characters rather than one
- 2Encoding is decided by whether any character falls outside the GSM 03.38 alphabet
- 3An empty body counts as ONE segment, not zero — sending nothing still costs a message
- 4The count is computed once so every outcome — sent, failed or gated — logs the same true quantity
Carriers bill texts in segments, not messages, and a single emoji changes the encoding for the whole message — one emoji in a 200-character text takes it from two segments to three, a 50% cost increase from one character. Counting messages, or even counting characters without knowing the encoding, under-bills every time and the difference comes out of the platform. Every outbound text is measured the way the carrier will actually charge for it.
- Under-billing long or emoji-bearing texts
- Usage figures that count messages rather than what carriers charge for
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