Programmable SMS

Send and receive text messages globally with the API that over a million developers depend on.

Sign up and start building
SMS built for developers
Code in the language you know to programatically send messages to millions.
When your phone number receives an incoming message, Twilio will send an HTTP request to your server at /sms.
1
Twilio servers
Your app tells Twilio how to respond with a text message.
2
Your app
const MessagingResponse =
  require('twilio').twiml.MessagingResponse;

app.post('/sms', (req, res) => {
  const twiml = new MessagingResponse();
  twiml.message('Thanks for signing up!');
  res.send(twiml.toString())
});
View complete examples
Twilio gets the instructions from your app and sends the text message.
3
Thanks for signing up!
Recipient’s phone
Write the code that counts.
Get to the important work faster using helper libraries, monitoring and debugging tools, documentation in your language, and even a serverless environment to host your code.
Phone numbers that get the job done.
With phone numbers available in over 30 countries, Twilio’s inventory lets you pick the right numbers with the right capabilities for your project.
Carrier complexities handled for you.
For every message to reach its destination, a lot has to go right. We don’t leave that up to chance. Twilio handles ever-changing telecom logic and carrier specific rules to ensure your message reaches its destination.
Explore SMS docs
SMS features
Programmable SMS has the features you’ll need to build quickly and scale to production. We’ve solved the hard problems so you don’t have to.

  • Smart content handling

  • Twilio Understand NLU engine Preview
  • MMS rich-media support
  • Support for any character
  • Smart encoding
  • Intelligent concatenation
  • Message body redaction
  • Opt-out management

  • Text message delivery intelligence

  • Recipient area-code Geomatch
  • Sticky Sender
  • Scaler
  • Message queueing
  • Message expiration setting

  • Add more channels with the same API

  • Facebook Messenger
  • Slack
  • RCS Business Messaging
See the full feature set
Build exactly what you imagine
With comprehensive documentation and our six server-side libraries, if you can imagine it, you can build it.
  • Arrival alerts
    Twilio helps us maintain that human element of connecting in the ridesharing model.”
    Anthony Velázquez, Engineering Manager
    See how they built itBuild it yourself
  • Masked phone numbers
    With Twilio at the core of our texting platform, we’re able to rapidly respond to our customers’ expectations, and try and meet their needs both now and in the future.”
    JB Brown, Senior Director of Mobile App Delivery
    See how they built itBuild it yourself
  • Account alerts
    We chose to plug and play SMS and voice capabilities with Twilio. Twilio SMS fit in nicely as a communications channel that flows through the rest of the system.”
    Devika Chawla, Director of Messaging Engineering & Platform
    See how they built itBuild it yourself
  • Two-factor authentication
    There’s no good excuse not to have 2FA. Security should not be an afterthought. Plan for it.”
    Sudesh Parem, Product Manager
    See how they built itBuild it yourself
Explore SMS project tutorials
API platforms to save you from re-inventing the wheel
APIs that handle common use cases out of the box, so you can focus on getting ahead, not simply getting started. Twilio handles the intricacies of global communications, best practices like user segmentation, privacy and more.
  • Twilio Notify: Multi-channel messaging
    Store your users' preferences of channel — from SMS, to Slack, to Alexa — and Twilio Notify delivers your message to that endpoint.
    Learn about Notify
  • Twilio Authy: Two-factor authentication
    Authenticate users securely with a one-time passcode or push notification.
    Learn about Authy
  • Twilio Verify: Phone verification to prevent fraud
    Reduce risk of fraud by validating it’s real humans who are creating accounts.
    Learn about Verify
  • Twilio Proxy: Anonymous real-time conversations
    Mask phone numbers between users to protect personally identifiable information.
    Learn about Proxy
Deploy or drag & drop
Write and deploy, or drag and drop with the Twilio Studio visual editor.
Save time and sprints with Twilio Studio. Now anyone on your team can create or modify SMS flows using your code or Twilio’s code, all within a common framework.
Learn how to build with Twilio Studio
Flexible SMS pricing options
Starting at $0.0005 per message, select the pricing option that’s right for you.
Pay-as-you-go
Pay only for what you use, when you use it. No contracts. No capacity planning.
Volume discounts
Automatically receive discount pricing once your application reaches volume scale.
Committed-use discounts
Receive larger discounts with monthly committed volume. Contact our sales team to learn more.
See SMS pricing
Build on Twilio. Code with confidence.
Send one or 1 billion messages
Twilio tests network reliability over 100,000 times a day to ensure there is capacity for your text messages.
Developers to support you when things go wrong
Support engineers know your setup and your language, wasting no time fixing your problem.
Enterprise-grade security and compliance
Data protection (GDPR), ISO 27001, SOC-2 certified for 2FA, and built-in SMS opt-out management.
99.999%+ API uptime
No scheduled downtime. We deploy old and new code in parallel to test for errors and update with code fixes in service.
No unwanted messages
120 Day, 7-point phone number cleaning so you can focus on customers, not spam.
Our ops team is your ops team
Carrier, security, and cloud ops teams work around the clock to improve service and handle incidents.
Sign up and start building
We can’t wait to see what you build.