Short answer
An Arabic SMS holds up to 70 characters in a single message because Arabic is sent in UCS-2 encoding. Longer Arabic messages are split into segments of 67 characters each, as every segment carries a reassembly header. An English GSM-7 message, by comparison, holds 160 characters, or 153 per segment.
Why is the Arabic limit lower than English?
Every SMS carries up to 140 octets of user data (3GPP TS 23.040). GSM-7 packs 7-bit characters, so 160 fit. Arabic is outside the GSM-7 alphabet, so the message uses UCS-2, at 2 octets per character: 140 / 2 = 70 characters.
| Encoding | Used for | Single SMS | Per segment in a long SMS |
|---|---|---|---|
| GSM-7 | Basic Latin letters, digits, common punctuation | 160 characters | 153 characters |
| UCS-2 | Arabic, emoji, other non-GSM characters | 70 characters | 67 characters |
How many segments will my Arabic message use?
Divide the character count by 67 once you pass 70, and round up. Each segment is usually billed as one SMS.
| Arabic characters | Segments |
|---|---|
| 1 to 70 | 1 |
| 71 to 134 | 2 |
| 135 to 201 | 3 |
| 202 to 268 | 4 |
Common mistakes with Arabic SMS
- Mixing English and Arabic in one message: the whole message becomes UCS-2, so the English text also counts against the 70 limit.
- Adding emoji: most are sent as two UCS-2 units, so each uses two character slots.
- Writing long Arabic links and signatures that push a message into an extra segment.
- Draft the Arabic text.
- Paste it into a character counter to see encoding and segments.
- Shorten until it fits the segment count you budgeted.
- Send English and Arabic versions as separate messages if you need both.