Twilio SMS Pricing 2026: $0.0083 a Text Plus Carrier Fees

Twilio charges $0.0083 for every SMS segment sent or received in the United States, on a long code, a toll-free number or a short code, according to Twilio's US SMS pricing page read on November 7, 2026. US carriers then add their own fee to each segment, from $0.0035 (AT&T) to $0.005 (Verizon) for an outbound text, and the number itself costs $1.15 a month for a local long code.

This guide puts every line of a Twilio SMS bill side by side: the per-segment rate, carrier fees, numbers, A2P 10DLC registration, international rates and the add-ons, with a worked monthly example for an online store. The last part covers the question a Shopify merchant should ask first: Twilio sells an API, so who builds the cart reminders and the campaigns? Kanal, our Shopify app for WhatsApp and SMS, answers it with flows that are ready from the install.

How much does Twilio charge per SMS?

Twilio's US price is the same for the three types of sender, per message segment:

Source: Twilio US SMS pricing page, which states "Pricing current as of October 2026", read on November 7, 2026. Carrier fees come on top.

Source: Twilio US SMS pricing page, read on November 7, 2026.

Three details from the same page matter for a budget:

• Replies cost the same as sends. A customer who answers your text costs you $0.0083 per segment, plus a carrier fee on some networks.
• Failed messages are billed. Twilio applies a processing fee of $0.001 to each message that ends in a "Failed" status.
• Volume discounts are negotiated. The page's FAQ says high-volume senders work with their Twilio account team on discounts, and committed-use pricing is sold by the sales team.

What is an SMS segment, and why does it change the price?

Twilio bills per segment, not per message. Its guide to character limits sets the rules:

• Plain text (GSM-7): up to 160 characters fit in one segment. A longer message is split into segments of 153 characters.
• Special characters (UCS-2): a single emoji or a character outside the GSM-7 set switches the whole message to UCS-2, and the limit drops to 70 characters, then 67 per segment.

In practice, a 200-character promotion costs two segments, and a 120-character text with one emoji costs two segments too. Cutting the emoji or a few words can halve the cost of a campaign.

What are Twilio's carrier fees?

On top of Twilio's rate, each US carrier charges a fee per segment, which Twilio passes through "without increasing the price charged by the carriers", in the words of its pricing FAQ. For a long code (10DLC):

Source: carrier fees section of the Twilio US SMS pricing page, long code table, read on November 7, 2026. Toll-free numbers have the same AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon fees, and $0.0045 for US Cellular.

Source: Twilio US SMS pricing page, carrier fees, read on November 7, 2026.

So a one-segment text to a Verizon customer really costs $0.0083 + $0.005 = $0.0133, and to an AT&T customer $0.0118. Since you do not choose your customers' carriers, budget with a blended rate.

How much do Twilio phone numbers cost?

Twilio adds the sender to the bill every month:

Source: phone number pricing on the Twilio US SMS pricing page, read on November 7, 2026. MMS-enabled short codes have a $500 one-time fee.

What does A2P 10DLC registration cost?

To text US customers from a 10-digit long code, a business registers a brand and a campaign with The Campaign Registry. Twilio's A2P 10DLC fees article, read on November 7, 2026, lists the fees it passes through:

Source: Twilio help center, read on November 7, 2026. The article notes that The Campaign Registry raised some of these fees on August 1, 2025.

Source: Twilio help center, A2P 10DLC pricing and fees, read on November 7, 2026.

The same article says a Low Volume Standard brand fits fewer than 6,000 messages a day, and Twilio's A2P 10DLC documentation warns that unregistered 10DLC traffic pays additional carrier fees.

What does Twilio charge outside the United States?

Rates change by destination. For the countries online stores sell to most, Twilio's country pages listed these prices per outbound segment:

Source: Twilio's SMS pricing pages for France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Australia, each "current as of October 2026", read on November 7, 2026. Each page warns that carrier fees may apply.

In most of Europe a text costs close to ten times Twilio's US rate, which is why many European stores weigh SMS against WhatsApp. Our comparison of WhatsApp and SMS prices by country puts the two side by side.

Which add-ons can appear on a Twilio SMS bill?

From the US pricing page:

• Engagement Suite: link shortening, click tracking and scheduling at $0.015 per outbound SMS, with the first 1,000 free each month.
• Compliance Toolkit: AI checks for possibly non-compliant texts, at $0.015 per outbound SMS.
• Traffic Optimization Engine: throughput management, from $300 a month.
• SMS pumping protection: on the French page, $0.025 per message for fraud detection.

The Engagement Suite alone can cost more than the text itself: $0.015 against $0.0083.

What does Twilio SMS cost for a real store?

A fictional US store sends one promotion a month to 10,000 opted-in customers, in one segment of plain text, from a 10DLC long code registered as a Standard brand. Its customers are split 40% Verizon, 35% T-Mobile and 25% AT&T.

Computed from the Twilio US SMS pricing page and the A2P 10DLC fees article, read on November 7, 2026. Fictional store and carrier split.

Two things move this total. An emoji in a 120-character text turns it into two segments, so the messaging lines double to $255. And the bill leaves out the larger cost for most stores: Twilio sells messaging through its API, so the campaign editor, the cart reminder trigger, the opt-out handling and the Shopify data are what your developers build, or another tool provides.

Twilio or a Shopify app: what should a store choose?

Twilio fits a team with developers that wants texts inside its own product, CRM or checkout, and is ready to build and maintain the flows. For a Shopify store that wants SMS to sell, Kanal is built for that job:

• The flows are ready. Abandoned cart reminders, order and delivery updates, back in stock alerts, post-purchase offers and review requests, triggered by your store events, as our SMS marketing page describes.
• Your segments are your send lists. Customers, orders and checkouts sync when the app is installed from the Shopify App Store, and each campaign shows the orders it brought in.
• One app for every channel. WhatsApp on every plan, and SMS, RCS and iMessage from the Scale plan, so you pick the channel campaign by campaign.

Source: Kanal pricing and Kanal SMS page, read on November 7, 2026. SMS messages are billed on top of the plan, by destination country and number of segments: we give you the rate for your volumes during a demo.

If you compare the two on your own volumes, count the same segments on each side, then add Twilio's carrier, number and registration fees, and the developer time to build what Kanal already includes. For WhatsApp on Twilio, our Twilio WhatsApp pricing guide covers the $0.005 per message fee, and our list of Twilio alternatives compares the other APIs and apps.

How do you estimate your own Twilio SMS bill?

1. Count your segments, not your messages: 160 plain characters per segment, 70 with an emoji, then 153 or 67 for long texts.
2. Split them by destination country, with your Shopify orders report, since a text to France costs almost ten times Twilio's US rate.
3. Apply Twilio's rate for each country, and count replies: inbound texts are billed too.
4. Add US carrier fees with a blended rate between $0.0035 and $0.005 per outbound segment.
5. Add the sender: $1.15 a month per long code, and 10DLC fees ($4.50 or $46 once, $15 per campaign, then $1.50 to $10 a month).
6. Add the build: developer time for campaigns, triggers, opt-outs and reporting, or the plan of the tool that provides them.
7. Compare with a Shopify app such as Kanal, and check the consent rules in our guide to SMS marketing opt-in.

Twilio SMS pricing at a glance

Twilio's SMS price looks like one number, $0.0083, and works out as five: the segment rate, the carrier fee, the number, the registration and the build. If you run a Shopify store and want SMS and WhatsApp flows without that build, book a Kanal demo and we will show them on your store, with the SMS rate for your volumes.