SMS

Send SMS at scale with Twilio APIs

One API, a few lines of code, and zero headaches—that’s all it takes to send and receive messages on the trusted platform for cross-channel messaging.

Free trial
No credit card required
Flexible pricing
Man in yellow shirt looking at phone with a message from Owl Bank about a summer camp purchase.
Man in yellow shirt looking at phone with a message from Owl Bank about a summer camp purchase.

Twilio SMS at a glance

  • A single vendor for SMS, RCS, Voice, Email, and WhatsApp
  • Built to scale: Twilio APIs can handle high-volume throughput reliably
  • A2P 10DLC ready with transparent requirements for sender identity and use case
  • Pay-as-you-go pricing: Twilio fees start at $0.0083 per message

Build once. Message everywhere.

Launch fast, scale globally, and deliver reliably. Twilio SMS combines developer-first APIs with built-in compliance and carrier routing to get the right message to the right person at the right moment (every time).

 From first text to global scale with Twilio SMS APIs

Workflow connecting compliance check with messaging and image icons and leading to analytics.
Workflow connecting compliance check with messaging and image icons and leading to analytics.

Programmable Messaging API

Send transactional MMS, SMS, and
WhatsApp messages with a single API.

  • Reach 180+ countries reliably with localized senders, compliance tools, and global guidelines.

  • Manage compliance, deliverability, replies, and more with Twilio’s programmable software.

  • Monitor and troubleshoot message delivery and engagement with real-time analytics.

Illustration of multichannel messaging options and live agent service.
Illustration of multichannel messaging options and live agent service.

Conversations API

Drive two-way engagement with cross-channel messaging for MMS and more using a single API.

  • Power commerce and support on SMS, MMS, chat, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp.

  • Manage participants, archive messages, and orchestrate workflows without additional code.

  • Get to market faster with quick-starts, sample apps, and SDKs.

 Lasting customer relationships start with SMS

Notifications

Keep customers in the know. Send alerts, reminders, and updates that land on time, every time—appointments, deliveries, and everything in between.

Verifications

Let good users in, keep the bad actors out. Deliver secure one-time passwords instantly for sign-ups, logins, and transactions.

Promotions

Turn messages into momentum. Send marketing campaigns and offers at scale to drive leads, boost sales, and build loyalty.

Conversational care and commerce

Talk with customers (not at them). Support the full customer journey with two-way SMS, WhatsApp, and more from a single API.

Cover of the report titled The Total Economic Impact of Twilio Messaging by Forrester.
Cover of the report titled The Total Economic Impact of Twilio Messaging by Forrester.

The ROI of Twilio Messaging

The Total Economic Impact™ of Twilio Messaging

A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting found Twilio Messaging provided:

  • 132% ROI for customers
  • 3% increase in messages delivered
  • 15% productivity improvement in development teams

Sending 2FA or OTP? Increase conversion rates with Verify

Verify is a purpose-built authentication solution for 2FA, OTP, Passkeys, Silent Network Authentication and more.

Get more users verified with Verify

Verify is a fully managed, multichannel authentication solution that’s optimized for redundancy, low-latency, and global scale.

  • Robust security measures built in
  • Meet global compliance and regulatory standards
  • 100% guaranteed protection from SMS pumping fraud with Twilio Verify Fraud Guard*
  • Deliver via SMS or WhatsApp, voice, TOTP, Push, Passkeys, and more

Intuit was using SMS to deliver one-time passcodes until they tried Twilio Verify. Now, they have a verification solution with high deliverability, global compliance, built-in redundancy, and more—and it was implemented in record time.

Chat bubble with an up arrow symbol
94%

deliverability of verification messages

Planet Earth
1M+

SMS sent worldwide

* Terms and conditions apply

Check out the docs

Kickstart your build for SMS text messaging using our quick-start guides, code snippets, SDKs, and more in our resource library.

Create a message

// Download the helper library from https://www.twilio.com/docs/node/install
const twilio = require("twilio"); // Or, for ESM: import twilio from "twilio";

// Find your Account SID and Auth Token at twilio.com/console
// and set the environment variables. See http://twil.io/secure
const accountSid = process.env.TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID;
const authToken = process.env.TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN;
const client = twilio(accountSid, authToken);

async function createMessage() {
  const message = await client.messages.create({
    body: "This is the ship that made the Kessel Run in fourteen parsecs?",
    from: "+15017122661",
    to: "+15558675310",
  });
  
console.log(message.body);
}

createMessage();

Scale your SMS. Pay as you go.

Twilio Messaging gives you two APIs on one trusted platform. Our pay-as-you-go pricing grows with you, so you can scale up or down as needed.

SMS messaging FAQs

The Twilio Programmable Messaging API lets you send and receive text and media messages via SMS and MMS programmatically across 180+ countries. It connects directly to Twilio's Super Network to handle carrier complexity, global compliance, and routing, letting you build alerts, verification, and promotional workflows with just a few lines of code.

Twilio supports local 10-digit long codes (A2P 10DLC), toll-free numbers, short codes, and alphanumeric sender IDs. You can provision local numbers for regional trust, toll-free numbers for scalable transactional alerts, or dedicated short codes for high-volume mass marketing campaigns.

Twilio provides built-in compliance tools in the Console and via API to help with A2P 10DLC brand registration, campaign approvals, toll-free verification, and opt-out management.

Twilio uses clear, pay-as-you-go pricing per message segment sent or received, with volume discounts available. US SMS rates start at $0.0083 per segment plus standard carrier passthrough fees with no long-term contracts or credit cards required to start building with a free trial.

One-way SMS through the Programmable Messaging API is ideal for sending transactional messages like alerts, notifications, and authentication codes. Two-way messaging through the Conversations API maintains threaded conversations, preserves message history, and supports multi-channel interactions for customer support and engagement.

Yes. Twilio offers enterprise-grade infrastructure backed by a 99.95%+ monthly API uptime SLA with 99.99% available through Twilio Editions. The Super Network monitors 900 million data signals daily across 1,000+ unique network monitors and 4,800+ carrier connections — detecting 99% of outages and latency before customers do.

Our Traffic Optimization Engine maximizes deliverability and speed for enterprises and platforms that are sending millions to billions of messages by dynamically allocating Messages Per Second capacity across sender types, channels, and destination countries. Features like Messaging Services provide smart sender selection, area code geomatching, automatic fallback routing, and real-time deliverability analytics to keep high-throughput programs running smoothly.

Introducing Twilio Messaging Engagement Suite

Get simpler development, quicker time to market, and higher deliverability rates1. See how Message Scheduling, Link Shortening with Click Tracking, advanced data, and real-time dashboards can benefit your business. 

1 In an evaluation of more than 63M messages sent through Twilio with shortened hyperlinks, messages with shortened hyperlinks by 3rd party Link Shorteners were filtered at 1.96% or 28x the rate of Twilio which was filtered at a rate of 0.07%

Let's find the right products for you

Generating your product picks...

See your product picks