143 SMS Marketing Statistics November 2026

SMS marketing statistics lean on one number more than any other, a 98% open rate, and that number has no clean origin. An FCC advisory committee repeated it in 2022 and pointed to a 2019 Gartner Digital Markets article plus two industry web pages for it (FCC Consumer Advisory Committee, Report on the State of Text Messaging, Aug 2022). The FTC repeated it, together with a 45% response rate, in a footnote in 2025 (FTC, Top text scams of 2024, Apr 2025). Texting platforms now publish their own versions of the figure, and one of them appears below as vendor research.

Every figure on this page links to the regulator, court, company filing or study that produced it, with the date of the data. Benchmarks from texting platforms are labelled vendor research because each one describes a single platform's customers, and where two sources measure the same thing differently, both appear with their method. For the email side of the same audience, see email marketing statistics. For the consent rules that apply to bought lists, see lead generation statistics.

How big is text messaging as a business channel?

The pipe is enormous, and the marketing revenue flowing through it is still small. Volume figures come from carriers and infrastructure vendors, while revenue figures come from the platforms that sell the software.

How many texts do Americans exchange each year?

Around 2.2 trillion, which is also where the 2020 peak sat.

• Americans exchanged over 2.1 trillion SMS and MMS messages in 2023, or more than 67,000 a second (CTIA, 2024 Annual Survey Highlights, Sep 2024).
• CTIA ranks 2024 above every year for message volume except 2020 (CTIA, 2025 Annual Survey Highlights, Aug 2025).
• In 2020, the peak year, the total was 2.2 trillion messages, or more than 6,750 for each American (FCC Consumer Advisory Committee, Report on the State of Text Messaging, Aug 2022).
• Messages sent on app and over-the-top platforms ran at about five times the volume exchanged over SMS and MMS in the US, according to the FCC committee (FCC Consumer Advisory Committee, Report on the State of Text Messaging, Aug 2022).

Who sells the infrastructure, and how large is that market?

Sinch sizes the whole digital customer communication market at about $93 billion, and the filings of its competitors show where texting revenue sits.

• Sinch put its addressable market at about USD 93 billion in 2025, growing 8 to 9 percent a year, and the figure covers messaging, voice and email rather than SMS alone (Sinch, Annual Report 2025, Apr 2026).
• Sinch processes more than 900 billion customer interactions a year across channels from SMS and WhatsApp to voice and email (Sinch, Interim Report Q2 2026, Jul 2026).
• About 40% of Bandwidth's 2025 revenue came from Programmable Messaging customers (Bandwidth, 2025 Form 10-K, Feb 2026).
• Bandwidth's messaging surcharge revenue, which is carrier fees passed through to customers, was $192.4 million in 2025, down 8% on lower political messaging after the November 2024 election (Bandwidth, 2025 Form 10-K, Feb 2026).
• Bandwidth also warns that the major US carriers and their intermediaries have added a variety of fees to A2P messages (Bandwidth, 2025 Form 10-K, Feb 2026).
• Klaviyo's revenue for the first six months of 2026 rose 27.2% to $728.6 million, and it lists expanded use of its text and WhatsApp channels among the causes (Klaviyo, Form 10-Q for Q2 2026, Aug 2026).
• Klaviyo expects its gross margin to decline modestly as text volume grows, because texts carry higher sending costs than email (Klaviyo, Form 10-Q for Q2 2026, Aug 2026).
• Sinch's API platform revenue fell in the second quarter of 2026 on lower SMS volumes in India, which accounts for only a low single-digit percentage of group gross profit (Sinch, Interim Report Q2 2026, Jul 2026).

How fast are senders adopting text messaging?

Message volume is growing faster than subscriber lists, at least among nonprofits, which means each subscriber hears more from each sender.

• SMS volume across Omnisend's merchants grew 31% in 2024 and 40% in 2025, in a 2025 sample of 321 million texts from 150,000 brands (Omnisend, 2026 Ecommerce Marketing Report, Jan 2026).
• Nonprofits sent 40% more mobile messages in 2025 than in 2024, and advocacy message volume more than doubled (M+R, Benchmarks 2026: Mobile Messaging, Dec 2025).
• Their mobile lists grew 4% in 2025, after growing 13% and 15% in the two years before (M+R, Benchmarks 2026: Mobile Messaging, Dec 2025).
• Nonprofits had an average of 176 mobile subscribers for every 1,000 email subscribers (M+R, Benchmarks 2026: Mobile Messaging, Dec 2025).
• 83% of marketers say customers now expect two-way conversations, the ability to reply to a marketing message and get an answer (Salesforce, State of Marketing 2026, Feb 2026).
• 69% of marketers struggle to respond promptly, and just over half say they can reliably reply to email and SMS communication (Salesforce, State of Marketing 2026, Feb 2026).

How well do marketing texts perform?

Platform benchmarks show click rates that email cannot match, but they come from lists people chose to join. They describe consented audiences and say nothing about cold lists, and the sender's industry moves the result more than the channel does.

Is the 98% text open rate real?

It is a vendor-reported figure, and the version regulators quote traces back to a 2019 article and industry web pages.

• Subtext reports a 98% open rate and 95% of messages opened within three minutes, across 10 billion texts sent to 28 million subscribers in eight industries in 2025 (vendor research) (Subtext, 2026 SMS Marketing Benchmark Report, Mar 2026).
• CTIA's spam page says 98% of texts are opened and names no source for the figure (CTIA, Fighting Spam Texts, Oct 2026).
• The Short Code Registry says over 90% of texts are opened and read within three minutes (Short Code Registry, Why a short code, Oct 2026).
• The FCC committee that repeated the 98% figure also warned that third-party data on unwanted texts should be carefully evaluated before anyone treats it as reliable (FCC Consumer Advisory Committee, Report on the State of Text Messaging, Aug 2022).
• Channels are not measured alike. Klaviyo credits a text with an order placed within 24 hours of sending, while an email must be opened or clicked and gets five days (Klaviyo, Form 10-Q for Q2 2026, Aug 2026).
• Omnisend flags that an operating system update in the fourth quarter of 2025 inflated its SMS click counts, likely through bot activity (Omnisend, 2026 Ecommerce Marketing Report, Jan 2026).

What click and conversion rates do marketing texts get?

From under 2% to more than 40%, depending on who is texting and why.

• Subtext's click-through rate was 40.64% for events and 37.40% for sports (Subtext, 2026 SMS Marketing Benchmark Report, Mar 2026).
• It was 33.64% for music and 29.44% for podcasts (Subtext, 2026 SMS Marketing Benchmark Report, Mar 2026).
• It was 21.32% for media and 14.18% for advertisers (Subtext, 2026 SMS Marketing Benchmark Report, Mar 2026).
• It was 12.80% for government and 1.62% for politics (Subtext, 2026 SMS Marketing Benchmark Report, Mar 2026).
• Subtext's engagement rate, which counts clicks plus replies, was 59.39% for events and 4.46% for politics (Subtext, 2026 SMS Marketing Benchmark Report, Mar 2026).
• Among Postscript's Shopify merchants, the middle half saw 2.87% to 8.01% click-through on campaign texts, against 9.53% to 17.28% on abandoned-cart texts (Postscript, 2026 SMS Benchmarks, Dec 2025).
• Back-in-stock texts drew click-through of 36.71% to 58.70%, and win-back texts 2.72% to 6.36% (Postscript, 2026 SMS Benchmarks, Dec 2025).
• Conversion for the middle half ranged from 1.01% to 2.38% on browse-abandonment texts and 0.67% to 2.67% on welcome series (Postscript, 2026 SMS Benchmarks, Dec 2025).
• Nonprofit fundraising texts averaged 3.7% click-through and a 4.2% page completion rate, and the average response rate was 0.17% (M+R, Benchmarks 2026: Mobile Messaging, Dec 2025).
• Advocacy texts averaged a 2.6% response rate, down 16% on the year (M+R, Benchmarks 2026: Mobile Messaging, Dec 2025).
• In Omnisend's data, click-to-conversion on UK SMS campaigns reached 5.1%, against a global average of 0.97% (Omnisend, 2026 Ecommerce Marketing Report, Jan 2026).

What does a text earn compared with an email?

Per send, scheduled texts and scheduled emails earned within a few cents of each other in one 2025 dataset, and automation lifted both.

• Omnisend merchants earned $0.18 per send on scheduled email campaigns and $2.87 on automated emails (Omnisend, 2026 Ecommerce Marketing Report, Jan 2026).
• Omnisend's own analysis put the return from email, SMS and push campaigns together at $79 per $1 spent, against $76 for email alone (Omnisend, 2026 Ecommerce Marketing Report, Jan 2026).
• Nonprofit mobile revenue grew 48% in 2025, while total online revenue grew 15% (M+R, Benchmarks 2026: Mobile Messaging, Dec 2025).
• Even so, one participant in the M+R data raised more through text than through email (M+R, Benchmarks 2026: Mobile Messaging, Dec 2025).
• Wildlife and animal welfare nonprofits drew 2.7% of revenue from mobile and small nonprofits 3.1% (M+R, Benchmarks 2026: Mobile Messaging, Dec 2025).
• Revenue per 1,000 mobile fundraising messages rose 3% overall, with double-digit gains in environmental and hunger groups and double-digit falls in health and rights groups (M+R, Benchmarks 2026: Mobile Messaging, Dec 2025).
• Subtext sets its click-through against typical email click-through of about 1.28% for events, 4.10% for podcasts and 0.83% for politics, using comparison figures of its own (vendor research) (Subtext, 2026 SMS Marketing Benchmark Report, Mar 2026).

Texts reach only people who opted in, and opt-ins come from pages that rank and convert. The pages that collect them are part of any text program.

What do consumers want from marketing texts, and what do they fear?

People accept texts they asked for. Scam texts have taught them to distrust the rest.

How many people opt in, and how many stay?

A few percent of site visitors give a phone number, and most of them stay.

• On Postscript's updated popup, the median merchant converted 3.6% of impressions to a phone number, against 4.4% to an email address (Postscript, 2026 SMS Benchmarks, Dec 2025).
• The 90th-percentile merchant converted 8.6% of impressions to a phone number (Postscript, 2026 SMS Benchmarks, Dec 2025).
• Postscript reports a median retention rate of 93.13% across merchants, with the 25th percentile at 86.35% (Postscript, 2026 SMS Benchmarks, Dec 2025).
• Subtext reports subscriber churn below 1% (vendor research) (Subtext, 2026 SMS Marketing Benchmark Report, Mar 2026).
• CTIA says 77% of Americans are comfortable getting texts from companies, nonprofits and other organizations if consent and opt-out requirements are met, and does not name the survey (CTIA, Fighting Spam Texts, Oct 2026).
• A Morning Consult poll of 1,999 registered voters in December 2021, cited by the FCC committee, found consumers prefer texting to voice calls nearly 2 to 1 (FCC Consumer Advisory Committee, Report on the State of Text Messaging, Aug 2022).

How many people opt out?

Under 1% of recipients per campaign text for the middle half of merchants, and more after automated welcome and popup flows.

• Unsubscribe rates for the middle half of Postscript merchants ran 0.33% to 0.88% on campaign texts (Postscript, 2026 SMS Benchmarks, Dec 2025).
• They ran 0.56% to 1.83% on abandoned-cart texts and 0.59% to 1.80% on browse-abandonment texts (Postscript, 2026 SMS Benchmarks, Dec 2025).
• They ran 1.00% to 2.93% on welcome series texts (Postscript, 2026 SMS Benchmarks, Dec 2025).
• They ran 1.25% to 4.03% on popup-triggered texts, the highest of any type (Postscript, 2026 SMS Benchmarks, Dec 2025).
• CTIA says nearly 90% of Americans believe an organization should get consent before sending a text, and does not name the survey (CTIA, Fighting Spam Texts, Oct 2026).

How big is the text scam problem?

Large enough that the FCC counts it in billions of dollars a year, and the money lost per report is rising.

• The share of text scam reports that included a money loss rose from 5% in 2020 to 11% in 2024 (FTC, Top text scams of 2024, Apr 2025).
• The five most common scam types made up about half of all text fraud reports in 2024, led by fake package delivery problems (FTC, Top text scams of 2024, Apr 2025).
• The median reported loss to a text scam was $1,000 in 2022 (FTC, Top text scams of 2022, Jun 2023).
• Complaints to the FCC that named a text message as the unwanted contact rose from 5,737 in 2019 to 29,825 in 2024 (FCC, Consumer Complaints Data, Oct 2026).
• Such complaints then fell to 18,588 in 2025, and had reached 18,897 in 2026 by mid-October (FCC, Consumer Complaints Data, Oct 2026).
• The FCC estimates that unwanted and illegal texts cause at least $16.5 billion in harm a year, from $11.3 billion of nuisance cost and $5.2 billion of fraud (FCC, Order 23-107 on Unlawful Text Messages, Dec 2023).

What does the law require before and after you send a text?

Consent comes first, and everything else follows from it. The rules are old, the enforcement is private and fast-moving, and the penalty arithmetic is per message.

What consent and opt-out rules apply to marketing texts in the US?

Written consent for marketing, a stop word that always works, and a fixed deadline for honoring it.

• The FCC says commercial texts require written consent, while consent for informational texts may be oral (FCC, Stop Unwanted Robocalls and Texts, Oct 2026).
• The FCC and courts have long held that text messages are calls under the TCPA, and in December 2023 the FCC codified that texts are covered by the National Do Not Call Registry (FCC, Order 23-107 on Unlawful Text Messages, Dec 2023).
• The FCC's telephone solicitation rule bars calls to a residential subscriber before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. local time (eCFR, 47 CFR 64.1200, Oct 2026).
• A reply using words other than the listed stop words must still be treated as revocation if a reasonable person would understand it that way (eCFR, 47 CFR 64.1200, Oct 2026).
• A sender may send one confirmation text after an opt-out, with no marketing content, and a confirmation sent within five minutes is presumed to be within the consumer's consent (eCFR, 47 CFR 64.1200, Oct 2026).
• A sender using a protocol that does not allow reply texts must disclose that two-way texting is unavailable (eCFR, 47 CFR 64.1200, Oct 2026).

What does it cost to break the rules?

Per message, and in class actions that multiply fast.

• Twilio says TCPA violations can bring civil or criminal penalties from the FCC, FTC, state attorneys general or private litigation, and that class actions are the most common form of private enforcement (Twilio, 2025 Form 10-K, Feb 2026).
• Bandwidth notes that the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule makes it unlawful to give substantial assistance to a seller or telemarketer that the provider knows, or consciously avoids knowing, is breaking the rule (Bandwidth, 2025 Form 10-K, Feb 2026).
• The McKesson case arose from a fax dispute under the same statute that governs texts, and the Court decided it on June 20, 2025 (Supreme Court, McLaughlin Chiropractic v. McKesson, Jun 2025).
• Florida's telephone solicitation law also sets damages of $500, with up to three times that for willful violations (Florida Statutes, Section 501.059, Oct 2026).
• Before suing over a text, a Florida recipient must reply STOP, and the sender then has 15 days to cease sending (Florida Statutes, Section 501.059, Oct 2026).
• WebRecon counted 198 TCPA suits in August 2026, and 72.2% of them were putative class actions (WebRecon, August 2026 Stats, Aug 2026).
• TCPA filings in August 2026 were 11.9% above July's 177 and 8.3% below August 2025's 216 (WebRecon, August 2026 Stats, Aug 2026).

How do the UK, EU, Canada and Australia treat marketing texts?

Consent again, with a narrow exception for existing customers and fines that regulators are using.

• UK PECR regulation 22 bars unsolicited direct marketing by electronic mail to individual subscribers unless they consented or the sender qualifies for the soft opt-in (UK Legislation, PECR Regulation 22, Feb 2026).
• An amendment in force from 5 February 2026 added a soft opt-in for charities (UK Legislation, PECR Regulation 22, Feb 2026).
• The ICO says marketing texts to individuals need specific consent, with a limited exception for a business's own previous customers, and that companies can be texted (ICO, Electronic mail marketing guidance, Oct 2026).
• The EU's ePrivacy Directive allows direct marketing by electronic mail only with prior consent, and its recital 40 names SMS messages (EUR-Lex, Directive 2002/58/EC, Jul 2002).
• The Canadian government's anti-spam site says spam includes unsolicited text messages, and the Spam Reporting Centre received 167,939 complaints between October 2021 and March 2022 (Government of Canada, Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation, Mar 2022).
• Australia's ACMA gave Latitude Finance an A$3,960,000 infringement notice for marketing SMS without sender contact information and a working unsubscribe (ACMA, Spam and telemarketing investigations, Apr 2026).
• It gave Tabcorp an A$4,003,270 notice for marketing SMS and WhatsApp messages sent without consent (ACMA, Spam and telemarketing investigations, Jun 2025).
• It gave Telstra an A$626,000 notice for marketing SMS sent without consent or a working unsubscribe (ACMA, Spam and telemarketing investigations, Mar 2025).
• It gave Outdoor Supacentre an A$302,500 notice for marketing SMS sent without consent (ACMA, Spam and telemarketing investigations, Jan 2024).

How do carriers register, filter and price marketing texts?

In the US, carriers decide whether a business text arrives, and their rules set your speed and your price. A brand that skips registration pays more and gets filtered more.

What do carriers require before a business can send?

Registration, consent records and a clean list, with filtering for anything else.

• CTIA's principles say senders should not use opt-in lists that were rented, sold or shared (CTIA, Messaging Principles and Best Practices, May 2023).
• They say an opt-in should not be transferable, and should apply only to the campaign it was given for (CTIA, Messaging Principles and Best Practices, May 2023).
• Recurring programs should send an opt-in confirmation naming the program, how to get help, how to opt out, the message frequency and any fees (CTIA, Messaging Principles and Best Practices, May 2023).
• Senders should not spread messages across many numbers to dodge filters, a practice called snowshoe messaging (CTIA, Messaging Principles and Best Practices, May 2023).
• Businesses cannot register with The Campaign Registry directly and must go through a registered messaging service provider (The Campaign Registry, Oct 2026).
• Twilio says registering for 10DLC brings lower filtering and higher throughput, while unregistered traffic from a Twilio 10DLC number incurs additional carrier fees (Twilio Docs, Programmable Messaging and A2P 10DLC, Oct 2026).
• Toll-free numbers must be verified before they send, and Twilio reviews requests within three business days (Twilio Docs, Toll-free verification, Oct 2026).
• In December 2023 the FCC required providers to block texts from a number after the FCC notifies them, unless the provider's investigation finds the texts are not illegal (FCC, Order 23-107 on Unlawful Text Messages, Dec 2023).
• CTIA told the FCC that provider-blocked spam texts grew tenfold, from 1.4 billion in 2015 to 14 billion in 2020 (FCC, Order 23-107 on Unlawful Text Messages, Dec 2023).

How much can a registered sender push through?

Hundreds of messages a second at the top of the trust scale, a handful at the bottom, and daily caps that follow the brand across platforms.

• A Trust Score of 75 to 100 earns 225 message segments a second toward the major US networks, 50 to 74 earns 120, and 1 to 49 earns 12 (Twilio Help Center, A2P 10DLC throughput and Trust Scores, Oct 2026).
• A low-volume mixed campaign gets 3.75 messages a second whatever its Trust Score (Twilio Help Center, A2P 10DLC throughput and Trust Scores, Oct 2026).
• Before 10DLC, Twilio gave each US long code 1 message a second (Twilio Help Center, A2P 10DLC throughput and Trust Scores, Oct 2026).
• A toll-free number gets 3 messages a second by default (Twilio Help Center, A2P 10DLC throughput and Trust Scores, Oct 2026).
• T-Mobile caps a brand with a Trust Score of 50 to 74 at 40,000 messages a day, and 25 to 49 at 10,000 (Twilio Help Center, T-Mobile daily limits for A2P 10DLC, Oct 2026).
• A sole proprietor brand is capped at 1,000 segments a day toward T-Mobile (Twilio Help Center, T-Mobile daily limits for A2P 10DLC, Oct 2026).
• The cap applies per EIN (US tax ID) across every platform the brand is registered on, and a sender that exceeds it gets error 30023 until midnight Pacific time (Twilio Help Center, T-Mobile daily limits for A2P 10DLC, Oct 2026).

What does a text cost to send?

About a cent in the US, before registration fees and the cost of a short code.

• Twilio charges $0.0083 per outbound SMS segment in the US, and $0.022 per outbound MMS (Twilio, US SMS pricing, Oct 2026).
• Carrier fees on top are $0.0035 at AT&T, $0.0045 at T-Mobile and $0.005 at Verizon for an outbound long-code SMS (Twilio, US SMS pricing, Oct 2026).
• Telnyx charges $0.004 per outbound message part plus the carrier fee, and $0.015 for MMS (Telnyx, SMS API pricing, Oct 2026).
• Telnyx applies volume discounts above 100 million messages a month, starting at $0.0020 per part for the next 150 million (Telnyx, SMS API pricing, Oct 2026).
• TCR fees passed through by Twilio are $4.50 for a sole proprietor or low-volume brand, $46 for a standard brand that includes vetting, and $15 to vet a campaign (Twilio Help Center, A2P 10DLC pricing and fees, Oct 2026).
• Monthly campaign fees are $10 for a standard campaign, $2 for a sole proprietor and $1.50 for low-volume mixed (Twilio Help Center, A2P 10DLC pricing and fees, Oct 2026).
• TCR raised its brand and vetting fees on August 1, 2025, with standard vetting going from $40 to $41.50 (Twilio Help Center, A2P 10DLC pricing and fees, Oct 2026).
• Twilio leases a random short code at $1,000 a month and a vanity short code at $1,500 a month, billed quarterly, and charges a one-time $500 for an MMS-enabled short code (Twilio, US SMS pricing, Oct 2026).

Where do texts work best, and what is replacing plain SMS?

Texts work best when the message is short, timed and expected. Health reminders and public notices show that best.

Do text messages change patient behavior?

Yes, modestly, and the evidence is stronger here than for any retail claim.

• The Cochrane review covered eight randomised trials with 6,615 participants, and seven studies found a risk ratio of 1.14 for attendance with text reminders versus none (Cochrane, Mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments, Dec 2013).
• Attendance was 80.3% with phone call reminders, and texts cost 55% and 65% less than calls in the two studies that measured cost (Cochrane, Mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments, Dec 2013).
• A JAMA Internal Medicine meta-analysis of 16 trials and 2,742 patients found texting raised the odds of medication adherence by a factor of 2.11, which it translated to adherence rising from an assumed 50% baseline to 67.8% (JAMA Internal Medicine, Text messaging for medication adherence, Mar 2016).
• A PNAS field experiment texted 47,306 patients one of 19 flu-shot nudges, and the messages raised vaccination by 5% on average (PNAS, Megastudy of text-based nudges for flu vaccination, May 2021).
• In that trial 42% of the usual-care group were vaccinated, and the best message reminded patients twice and said a dose was reserved for them (PNAS, Megastudy of text-based nudges for flu vaccination, May 2021).
• A 2024 meta-analysis of 25 trials found text reminders raised vaccination uptake with a risk ratio of 1.09 (Vaccines, Text message reminders and vaccination uptake, Oct 2024).

How do governments and regulated firms use texts?

For short, one-way notices that the rules cap in number and length.

• GOV.UK Notify has sent 5.7 billion text messages since May 2016, out of 13.7 billion messages including 8.0 billion emails and 105 million letters (GOV.UK Notify, Performance data, Oct 2026).
• It sent 4,838,933 texts on 13 October 2026 alone (GOV.UK Notify, Performance data, Oct 2026).
• Its messages are sent within 10 seconds 100.00% of the time on average (GOV.UK Notify, Performance data, Oct 2026).
• The FCC exempts certain healthcare texts from the consent requirement only if they are 160 characters or fewer, no more than one a day and three a week, and carry no marketing or billing content (eCFR, 47 CFR 64.1200, Oct 2026).
• Package delivery texts are exempt only at one per package, plus one more for each of up to two delivery attempts when a signature is required, and an opt-out must be honored within six business days (eCFR, 47 CFR 64.1200, Oct 2026).
• A bank's fraud-alert texts are exempt only at three messages per event over three days, with no marketing content (eCFR, 47 CFR 64.1200, Oct 2026).
• Bandwidth lists retail and ecommerce promotions, financial services authentication and healthcare patient engagement among its messaging use cases (Bandwidth, 2025 Form 10-K, Feb 2026).

What are MMS and RCS adding to plain SMS?

Richer media at a higher price, with carrier support that arrived in 2025.

• An MMS can carry media up to 5 MB and up to 1,600 characters of text without multi-segment billing (Twilio, US SMS pricing, Oct 2026).
• Twilio prices an RCS rich text at $0.0083 per segment and RCS rich media at $0.022 per message (Twilio, US SMS pricing, Oct 2026).
• Carrier fees for outbound RCS rich text are $0.0045 at AT&T, $0.0062 at T-Mobile and $0.005 at Verizon (Twilio, US SMS pricing, Oct 2026).
• RCS senders launching on US carriers also pay carrier onboarding fees (Twilio, US SMS pricing, Oct 2026).
• Google said in November 2023 that more than 1 billion people had RCS enabled in Google Messages each month (Google, One billion RCS users in Google Messages, Nov 2023).
• Apple's Messages app added RCS for contacts without Apple devices in iOS 18 (Apple Newsroom, iOS 18 announcement, Jun 2024).
• The GSMA says its Universal Profile for RCS gives 6.7 billion consumers a consistent messaging experience (GSMA, RCS Universal Profile, Oct 2026).
• Klaviyo's platform sends text, RCS and WhatsApp messages (Klaviyo, 2025 Form 10-K, Feb 2026).
• Bandwidth supports RCS for Business, so enterprises can send branded, interactive messages (Bandwidth, 2025 Form 10-K, Feb 2026).

Methodology and Sources

Every statistic on this page was traced to the organisation that ran the study, wrote the rule, decided the case or filed the document, and each URL was fetched and checked for the figure on 14 October 2026. Pages that republish other people's numbers, including other SMS roundups, were not used. Texting platforms (Subtext, Postscript, Omnisend, Twilio, Telnyx, Klaviyo, Sinch, Bandwidth) report data from their own customers or prices, so those figures are vendor research and their definitions differ: Subtext counts clicks per delivered message, Postscript reports the 25th to 75th percentile of Shopify merchants, and Klaviyo attributes orders within 24 hours for texts. M+R covers nonprofits only. Pages with no publication date (Postscript, M+R, CTIA, Twilio documentation, pricing pages, ICO guidance, the FCC consumer guide) are dated by the end of their data period or by the month they were checked. The FCC complaint counts come from the FCC's open data portal, filtered to complaints whose unwanted contact type is a text message and grouped by year of filing. WebRecon counts TCPA suits over calls and texts together. The FTC and the FCC committee quote the 98% open rate, and it is reported here only with its origin. The JAMA Internal Medicine meta-analysis is cited from its Europe PMC abstract record because the journal site blocks automated reads. The page is refreshed monthly. For the wider picture, see email marketing statistics and marketing statistics.

Sources

• FCC Consumer Advisory Committee, Report on the State of Text Messaging
• FTC, Top text scams of 2024
• CTIA, 2025 Annual Survey Highlights
• Subtext, 2026 SMS Marketing Benchmark Report
• M+R, Benchmarks 2026: Mobile Messaging
• Omnisend, 2026 Ecommerce Marketing Report
• Postscript, 2026 SMS Benchmarks
• U.S. Code, 47 U.S.C. 227
• FCC, Order 24-24 on Revocation of Consent
• Supreme Court, McLaughlin Chiropractic v. McKesson
• WebRecon, August 2026 Stats
• Twilio Help Center, T-Mobile daily limits for A2P 10DLC
• Cochrane, Mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments
• ICO, Complaints about automated nuisance calls hit five-year high
• Sinch, Annual Report 2025
• CTIA, 2024 Annual Survey Highlights
• Sinch, Interim Report Q2 2026
• Bandwidth, 2025 Form 10-K
• Klaviyo, Form 10-Q for Q2 2026
• Salesforce, State of Marketing 2026
• CTIA, Fighting Spam Texts
• Short Code Registry, Why a short code
• FTC, Top text scams of 2022
• FCC, Consumer Complaints Data
• FCC, Order 23-107 on Unlawful Text Messages
• FCC, Stop Unwanted Robocalls and Texts
• eCFR, 47 CFR 64.1200
• Twilio, 2025 Form 10-K
• Florida Statutes, Section 501.059
• UK Legislation, PECR Regulation 22
• ICO, Electronic mail marketing guidance
• EUR-Lex, Directive 2002/58/EC
• Government of Canada, Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation
• ACMA, Spam and telemarketing investigations
• CTIA, Messaging Principles and Best Practices
• The Campaign Registry
• Twilio Docs, Programmable Messaging and A2P 10DLC
• Twilio Docs, Toll-free verification
• Twilio Help Center, A2P 10DLC throughput and Trust Scores
• Twilio, US SMS pricing
• Telnyx, SMS API pricing
• Twilio Help Center, A2P 10DLC pricing and fees
• JAMA Internal Medicine, Text messaging for medication adherence
• PNAS, Megastudy of text-based nudges for flu vaccination
• Vaccines, Text message reminders and vaccination uptake
• GOV.UK Notify, Performance data
• Google, One billion RCS users in Google Messages
• Apple Newsroom, iOS 18 announcement
• GSMA, RCS Universal Profile
• Klaviyo, 2025 Form 10-K

Glossary

• A2P: application-to-person, messaging sent by a business or software to a consumer.
• CASL: Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation.
• CTIA: the US wireless industry association.
• 10DLC: 10-digit long code, the US system for registering business text senders on ordinary phone numbers.
• DNC: Do Not Call, the US registry of numbers that opted out of telemarketing.
• ePrivacy Directive: the EU law on electronic communications privacy, which covers direct marketing by electronic mail including SMS.
• FCC: the US Federal Communications Commission.
• ICO: the UK Information Commissioner's Office.
• MMS: multimedia messaging service, a text with images, audio or video.
• MPS: messages (or message segments) per second, a measure of sending throughput.
• PECR: the UK Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations.
• RCS: rich communication services, the carrier standard for branded, interactive messages.
• SMS: short message service, the 160-character text message.
• TCPA: the US Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which governs calls and texts to consumers.
• TCR: The Campaign Registry, which administers 10DLC brand and campaign registration for US carriers.
• Trust Score: the 0 to 100 score a brand receives when it registers as a standard 10DLC sender.