Twilio SMS Python Quickstart
With just a few lines of code, your Python application can send SMS messages with Twilio Programmable Messaging.
This Programmable Messaging Quickstart will walk you through the entire process step-by-step, starting with setting up your Twilio account all the way through sending an SMS using a Messaging Service.
In this Quickstart, you will learn how to:
- Sign up for Twilio and get your first SMS-enabled Twilio phone number
- Set up your development environment to send outbound messages
- Send your first outbound SMS
- Set up your first Twilio Messaging Service
- Send a second SMS from that Messaging Service
By the end of this Quickstart, you’ll have a solid foundation for building and scaling with Twilio’s Programmable Messaging for your specific use cases.
Sign up for - or sign in to - Twilio
Already have a Twilio account? Go ahead and skip this section.
You can sign up for a free Twilio trial account here.
- When you sign up, you'll be asked to verify your personal phone number. This helps Twilio verify your identity and also allows you to send test messages to your phone from your Twilio account while in trial mode.
- Once you verify your number, you'll be asked a series of questions to customize your experience.
- Once you finish the onboarding flow, you'll arrive at your project dashboard in the Twilio Console. This is where you'll be able to access your Account SID, authentication token, find a Twilio phone number, and more.
Install the Twilio CLI
We'll use the Twilio CLI (command line interface) for a few tasks, so let's install that next.
One of the easiest ways to install the CLI on Mac OS X is to use Homebrew. If you don't already have it installed, visit the Homebrew site for installation instructions and then return here.
Once Homebrew is installed, simply run the following command to install the CLI:
brew tap twilio/brew && brew install twilio
Updating
If you already installed the CLI with brew and want to upgrade to the latest version, run:
brew upgrade twilio
Warning for Node.js developers
If you have installed Node.js version 10.12 or higher on your Mac, you can avoid potential Node.js version conflicts by installing the CLI using npm:
npm install twilio-cli -g
Before we can install, we need to make sure you have Node.js installed (version 10.12 or above). To see if you have node installed, try running this command:
node -v
If your system reports v10.12.0 or above, you can skip the next step.
Installing Node.js on Windows
Using the Windows Installer (.msi) is the recommended way to install Node.js on Windows. You can download the installer from the Node.js download page.
Installing Twilio CLI
The CLI is installed with npm (Node Package Manager), which comes with Node.js. To install the CLI run the following command:
npm install twilio-cli -g
Note the -g option is what installs the command globally so you can run it from anywhere in your system.
Updating
If you already installed the CLI with npm and want to upgrade to the latest version, run:
npm install twilio-cli@latest -g
Before we can install, we need to make sure you have Node.js installed (version 10.12 or above). Even if you already installed Node yourself, the CLI works best when you install it using nvm. Here's how to get nvm installed on most Linux systems:
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.34.0/install.sh | bash
Please visit the nvm installation instructions for additional options and troubleshooting steps. Once you have nvm installed, run the following to install and use the most recent LTS release of Node.js:
nvm install --lts nvm use <insert version reported from above>
Installing other Twilio CLI prerequisites for Linux
Depending on your distribution, you will need to run one of the following commands:
- Debian/Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install libsecret-1-dev - Red Hat-based:
sudo yum install libsecret-devel - Arch Linux:
sudo pacman -S libsecret
Installing Twilio CLI
The CLI is installed with npm (Node Package Manager), which comes with Node.js. To install the CLI run the following command:
npm install twilio-cli -g
Note the -g option is what installs the command globally so you can run it from anywhere in your system.
Updating
If you already installed the CLI with npm and want to upgrade to the latest version, run:
npm install twilio-cli@latest -g
Run twilio login to get the Twilio CLI connected to your account. Visit https://www.twilio.com/console, and you’ll find your unique Account SID and Auth Token to provide to the CLI.
You can reveal your auth token by clicking on the eyeball icon:
Get a phone number
If you don't currently own a Twilio phone number with SMS functionality, you'll need to purchase one. With the CLI, run:
twilio phone-numbers:buy:local --country-code US --sms-enabled
Replace US with your ISO-3166-1 country code if you would like a phone number in another country. If you aren't finding any SMS enabled numbers, try looking for a mobile number instead of a local number: twilio phone-numbers:buy:mobile --country-code DE --sms-enabled
Select a phone number to add it to your account.
Next, we need to install Python and the Twilio Python Helper Library.
Install Python and the Twilio Helper Library
If you’ve gone through one of our other Python Quickstarts already and have Python and the Twilio Python helper library installed, you can skip this step and get straight to sending your first text message.
To send your first SMS, you’ll need to have Python and the Twilio Python helper library installed.
Install Python
If you’re using a Mac or Linux machine, you probably already have Python installed. You can check this by opening up a terminal and running the following command:
python --version
You should see something like:
$ python --version Python 3.4
Windows users can follow this excellent tutorial for installing Python on Windows, or follow the instructions from Python's documentation.
Twilio’s Python server-side SDK supports both Python 2 and Python 3. You can use either version for this quickstart, but we recommend using Python 3 for future projects with Twilio unless there are specific libraries your project needs which are only compatible with Python 2.
Install the Twilio Python Server-side SDK
The easiest way to install the library is using pip, a package manager for Python that makes it easier to install the libraries you need. Simply run this in the terminal:
pip install twilio
If you get a pip: command not found error, you can also use easy_install by running this in your terminal:
easy_install twilio
If you'd prefer a manual installation, you can download the source code (ZIP) for twilio-python and then install the library by running:
python setup.py install
in the folder containing the twilio-python server-side SDK library code.
Send an outbound SMS with Python
Now that we have Python and twilio-python installed, we can send an outbound text message from the Twilio phone number we just purchased with a single API request. Create and open a new file called send_sms.py and type or paste in this code sample.
You’ll need to edit your send_sms.py file a little more before your message will send:
Replace the placeholder credential values
Swap the placeholder values for account_sid and auth_token with your personal Twilio credentials. Go to https://www.twilio.com/console and log in. On this page, you’ll find your unique Account SID and Auth Token, which you’ll need any time you send messages through the Twilio Client like this. You can reveal your auth token by clicking on the 'view' link:
Open send_sms.py and replace the values for account_sid and auth_token with your unique values.
Please note: it's okay to hardcode your credentials when getting started, but you should use environment variables to keep them secret before deploying to production. Check out how to set environment variables for more information.
Replace the from_ phone number
Remember that SMS-enabled phone number you bought just a few minutes ago? Go ahead and replace the existing from_ number with that one, making sure to use E.164 formatting:
[+][country code][phone number including area code]
Replace the to phone number
Replace the to phone number with your mobile phone number. This can be any phone number that can receive text messages, but it’s a good idea to test with your own phone so you can see the magic happen! As above, you should use E.164 formatting for this value.
If you are on a Twilio Trial account, your outgoing SMS messages are limited to phone numbers that you have verified with Twilio. Phone numbers can be verified via your Twilio Console's Verified Caller IDs.
When you send an SMS from your free trial phone number, it will always begin with "Sent from a Twilio trial account." We remove this message after you upgrade.
Save your changes and run this script from your terminal:
python send_sms.py
That's it! In a few moments, you should receive an SMS from your Twilio number on your phone.
Are your customers in the U.S. or Canada? You can also send them MMS messages by adding just one line of code. Check out this guide to sending MMS to see how it's done.
In this code sample, we are making a POST request to the Programmable Messaging API’s Message endpoint in order to create a new outbound message. We are using the twilio-python library’s built-in create method, but you could make this request using the Twilio CLI (that you already installed), curl, or a request module of your choosing.
Check out the code samples to send an SMS with the Twilio CLI and curl. Don't forget to update the body, to, and from parameters!
Set up a Twilio Messaging Service
Congratulations, you’ve sent your first SMS with Twilio Programmable Messaging and received it on your personal device.
At this point, we have acquired one Twilio phone number and used it to send one outbound SMS. You can imagine a time in the not-so-distant future where you'll need a more robust, feature-rich way to send messages, such as:
- sending many messages over a short period of time
- handling opt-ins and opt-outs
- ensuring that your customers always receive a consistent messaging experience with the same phone number.
In the next part of the Quickstart, we’ll walk through setting up your first Messaging Service. You can think of a Messaging Service as a container to hold all of your available phone numbers (and other senders) and comes with features that you may need along your messaging journey.
Create a Messaging Service with your phone number
Run the following Twilio CLI command to create a Messaging Service that we will use to send our first programmable SMS.
twilio api:messaging:v1:services:create --friendly-name "My first Messaging Service"
Take note of the Messaging Service SID (It starts with “MGXXX...”). We'll need it to send our next message.
Next, add the phone number you just purchased. Forgot the number already? No worries, you can list it with the Twilio CLI:
twilio phone-numbers:list # Grab the SID ("PNXXXX...") of your number
Add your phone number to your newly created Messaging Service with the following command:
twilio api:messaging:v1:services:phone-numbers:create --service-sid MGXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX --phone-number-sid PNXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Send an SMS from your Messaging Service
Sending an outbound SMS from a Messaging Service is similar to sending from an individual Twilio phone number. The primary difference is replacing the from_ parameter with the messaging_service_sid to indicate that you are sending from a phone number within your Messaging Service’s sender pool. (Currently, there is only one phone number in your sender pool, so we'll be sending from that one.)
Replace the messaging_service_sid parameter
Remember that Messaging Service you just created? Instead of the from_ parameter and your phone number, use the messaging_service_sid parameter with the "MGXXXX..." of your Messaging Service SID. Save your changes and run this script from your terminal:
python send_sms.py
And that’s in to send an SMS using a Twilio Messaging Service! In a few seconds, you should receive a second SMS on your phone from your Twilio phone number. The Messaging Service seamlessly selected your number from its Sender Pool to send that second outbound message.
Where to next?
Now that you've send your first SMS messages, check out the following resources to continue your messaging journey with Twilio:
- Learn about inbound messages with Receive and Reply to SMS and MMS messages
- Want to send with WhatsApp? Check out our WhatsApp Quickstart for Python and our guide to Sending WhatsApp Notifications with Templates
- Build Server Notifications with Twilio Programmable Messaging
- Dive into the API Reference documentation for Twilio SMS
- Track the delivery status of your messages with Python
We can't wait to see what you build!
Need some help?
We all do sometimes; code is hard. Get help now from our support team, or lean on the wisdom of the crowd browsing the Twilio tag on Stack Overflow.