Text message character limit

If you have a Sprint phone, you can send and receive text messages of up to 160 characters with any major U.S. wireless carriers and many international wireless carriers.

Nextel users have Web-based text messaging and have a 500-character limit.

Note: Some Nextel phones purchased before 2000 have a 140-character limit.

Exceeding maximum character limit

Only the first 160 characters of the message will be received on Sprint phones; only the first 500 characters of the message will be received on Nextel phones.

What’s included in text message character limits?

The character limit includes the composed message and sometimes the recipient's email address, the subject and callback number.

Kilobytes (kb) limits of text messages

Most phones don’t have size limitations in kilobytes; however, older phones support 30kb and newer devices support 100kb. These phones should have a feature that enables users to know the size of the message before sending.