What Is a Message Segment?
Understand how segments work and how your account usage is calculated.
SMS and MMS messages are made up of 160-character segments. Your message can be longer than 160 characters, but the system breaks it into segments and concatenates them so the recipient sees one continuous message.
Your account is billed by the number of segments used, not the number of messages sent. Both outgoing and incoming messages count against your segments.
Segment counts by message type:
- Standard SMS: 160 characters = 1 segment
- Messages over 160 characters: multiple segments, joined for the recipient
- MMS messages (images, GIFs, video): counted as 3 segments
- Content with emojis or binary data: segment count varies based on content size
Message IQ includes a segment character calculator in the web app to help you estimate usage before sending.