{"head":{"title":"SMS API Pricing Compared: US Messages | OceanLab","description":"SMS API prices for US numbers per segment from Twilio and Plivo, with number rental and carrier fee notes, each read off the vendor's own page.","canonical":"https://oceanlab.in/pricing/categories/sms"},"asOf":"2026-10-25","category":"sms","vendors":[{"id":"twilio","name":"Twilio","product":"Twilio SMS API","categories":["sms"],"source":"https://www.twilio.com/en-us/sms/pricing/us","checkedAt":"2026-10-25","assumptions":"US destination, long code (10DLC) sender, USD, pay-as-you-go. Page says 'Pricing current as of October 2026'. Carrier fees are extra.","plans":[],"meters":[{"id":"sms-out","kind":"sms-us","label":"Outbound SMS, US long code","unit":"SMS segment","per":1,"price":0.0083,"included":0,"plan":null,"note":"Plus carrier fees, e.g. $0.0035 AT&T, $0.0045 T-Mobile, $0.005 Verizon per long-code SMS.","source":"https://www.twilio.com/en-us/sms/pricing/us"},{"id":"sms-in","kind":"other","label":"Inbound SMS, US long code","unit":"SMS segment","per":1,"price":0.0083,"included":0,"plan":null,"source":"https://www.twilio.com/en-us/sms/pricing/us"},{"id":"mms-out","kind":"other","label":"Outbound MMS, US long code","unit":"message","per":1,"price":0.022,"included":0,"plan":null,"source":"https://www.twilio.com/en-us/sms/pricing/us"},{"id":"number","kind":"other","label":"Long code phone number","unit":"number-month","per":1,"price":1.15,"included":0,"plan":null,"source":"https://www.twilio.com/en-us/sms/pricing/us"},{"id":"failed","kind":"other","label":"Failed message processing fee","unit":"message","per":1,"price":0.001,"included":0,"plan":null,"source":"https://www.twilio.com/en-us/sms/pricing/us"}],"notes":[{"title":"Per segment","detail":"Text messages are charged per segment, so long messages cost more than one unit."},{"title":"Carrier fees extra","detail":"Carriers add a per-message fee on top, passed through at cost (e.g. Verizon $0.005 per outbound long-code SMS)."},{"title":"10DLC registration","detail":"US A2P 10DLC senders pay registration onboarding fees."},{"title":"Volume discounts","detail":"Discounts are arranged with the Twilio account team; no public tier table on the page."}],"unverified":["Volume discount tiers are not published as numbers."]},{"id":"plivo","name":"Plivo","product":"Plivo SMS API","categories":["sms"],"source":"https://www.plivo.com/sms/pricing/us/","checkedAt":"2026-10-25","assumptions":"US destination, long code sender, USD, pay-as-you-go. Carrier surcharge fees are extra.","plans":[],"meters":[{"id":"sms-out","kind":"sms-us","label":"Outbound SMS, US long code","unit":"SMS segment","per":1,"price":0.0077,"included":0,"plan":null,"note":"Plus carrier surcharge, e.g. $0.0035 AT&T, $0.0045 T-Mobile, $0.0050 Verizon.","source":"https://www.plivo.com/sms/pricing/us/"},{"id":"sms-in","kind":"other","label":"Inbound SMS, US long code","unit":"SMS segment","per":1,"price":0.0077,"included":0,"plan":null,"source":"https://www.plivo.com/sms/pricing/us/"},{"id":"mms-out","kind":"other","label":"Outbound MMS, US long code","unit":"message","per":1,"price":0.018,"included":0,"plan":null,"source":"https://www.plivo.com/sms/pricing/us/"},{"id":"number","kind":"other","label":"Long code phone number rental","unit":"number-month","per":1,"price":0.5,"included":0,"plan":null,"source":"https://www.plivo.com/sms/pricing/us/"}],"notes":[{"title":"Carrier surcharges","detail":"Carrier-specific fees are added on top of base rates for inbound and outbound SMS."},{"title":"Volume discounts","detail":"Page states volume discounts as you scale; no tier numbers shown."},{"title":"Short codes","detail":"Short codes carry a $1,500 one-time fee plus $500/month (billed quarterly)."}],"unverified":["Volume discount tiers not published."]}],"vendorPages":["aws","azure","cloudflare","digitalocean","firebase","fly-io","google-cloud","mongodb-atlas","neon","netlify","planetscale","render","supabase","vercel","algolia","google-maps","mapbox","paddle","plaid","postmark","resend","sendgrid","stripe","twilio"],"leftOut":[{"id":"vonage","name":"Vonage","categories":["sms"],"source":"https://www.vonage.com/communications-apis/sms/pricing/","why":"Pricing page blocked by a bot check (Cloudflare 'Just a moment' via curl, HTTP 403 via WebFetch). No price recorded."}],"siblings":[{"label":"CDN pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/cdn","detail":"Priced on 1 TB of CDN traffic and 10M requests a month."},{"label":"Cloud hosting pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/cloud-hosting","detail":"Priced on one 2 vCPU / 4 GB server running all month, with 200 GB of egress."},{"label":"Database pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/databases","detail":"Priced on the smallest paid always-on database with 20 GB of storage."},{"label":"Edge functions pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/edge-functions","detail":"Priced on 20M edge function requests a month."},{"label":"Object storage pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/object-storage","detail":"Priced on 500 GB stored, 1 TB downloaded and 1M writes a month."},{"label":"Serverless functions pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/serverless","detail":"Priced on 10M invocations and 1M GB-seconds a month."},{"label":"Product analytics pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/analytics","detail":"Priced on 5M events a month."},{"label":"Auth pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/auth","detail":"Priced on 20,000 monthly active users."},{"label":"Banking data API pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/banking-data","detail":"Priced on 500 verified bank accounts a month."},{"label":"Email API pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/email-api","detail":"Priced on 100,000 emails a month."},{"label":"Error monitoring pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/error-monitoring","detail":"Priced on 100,000 errors a month."},{"label":"KYC and identity verification pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/kyc-identity","detail":"Priced on 500 identity verifications a month."},{"label":"Maps API pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/maps","detail":"Priced on 100,000 web map loads and 50,000 geocodes a month."},{"label":"Observability pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/observability","detail":"Priced on 10 hosts and 200 GB of logs a month."},{"label":"Payments pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/payments","detail":"Priced on 1,000 card payments of $50 a month."},{"label":"Search API pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/search-api","detail":"Priced on 100,000 searches a month."}],"faqs":[{"question":"Which SMS API vendor is cheapest?","answer":"For 10,000 SMS to US numbers a month, Plivo comes out lowest at about $77.00 a month on list prices, and Twilio highest at about $83.00, checked 2026-10-25. A different workload can change the order, so enter your own numbers in the estimator."},{"question":"How is the estimate worked out?","answer":"Each vendor is priced on its cheapest plan that lists a rate for every line of the workload: the plan fee plus each usage line, after any free or included amount. A plan's monthly minimum counts as a floor. Volume tiers are applied in order. Taxes, discounts and committed-use deals are left out."},{"question":"Why are some vendors missing a price?","answer":"We could not read the pricing page of Vonage on 2026-10-25, so it is left out."},{"question":"How current are these prices?","answer":"Every rate was read off the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-10-25 and links to it. Prices change often: check the vendor's page before you commit, and tell us if a number here is out of date."}]}