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Carriers do not bill text messages, they bill segments. Most messages are one segment, which is why a text usually costs exactly the published rate. The ones that cost more got there by accident, almost always because of a single character.
Want to check a specific message? Paste it into the calculator on the SMS pricing page and it will show you the split, the alphabet it uses, and the cost.

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How a segment is counted

A segment is a fixed amount of room. How much room depends on which alphabet your message needs. Two things follow from that table, and they explain nearly every surprising SMS bill. A message longer than one segment holds less per segment. When a message is split, part of every segment carries the header that lets the handset reassemble them. So a 320-character message is 3 segments, not 2. One character outside the standard alphabet converts the whole message. Not the character, the whole message. A 90-character text that would have been one segment becomes two the moment you add an emoji.

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Which characters are free, and which are not

This is the part that catches French and Spanish senders out. The standard SMS alphabet is not “letters without accents”, it is a specific list.
Letters: é è à ù ì ò ä ö ü ñ å ø æ ß Ç É Ä Ö Ñ Ü Å Ø ÆPunctuation and symbols: the straight apostrophe ', the straight quote ", ¡ ¿ § £ $ ¥ ¤ and every character on a plain English keyboard.
Letters: ç ê â î ô û ë ï á í ó ú ã õ ā œ and every other accented letter not listed above.Punctuation: the curly apostrophe ’ and curly quotes “ ”, which phone keyboards and word processors insert automatically in place of the straight ones.Every emoji.
^ { } \ [ ] ~ | and €. These sit in an extension table, so each one uses two characters of room instead of one.
In French, confirmé costs nothing extra and ça marche doubles the price of the message. In Spanish, ñ and ü are free but á í ó ú are not, so most Spanish messages run on the 70-character limit.

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Rates by country

All rates are in US dollars, per segment, and cover the country your Allo number is in. “Allo sends it for you” covers automatic replies after a missed call, workflows, the API and the MCP. The rate is the same whichever one triggered the message. In the United States and Canada, texts you type yourself are included, subject to fair use of 500 segments per seat, per month. That is well above a normal month. Only automated messages are metered. MMS is priced per message, not per segment, and it works only on US and Canadian numbers once 10DLC is approved. Keep attachments under 1 MB: most carriers reject anything larger. French, British and Belgian numbers cannot send or receive MMS, because telecom regulation blocks it on virtual numbers. That is industry-wide and not specific to Allo.
Swiss numbers on Allo are landline numbers. A landline cannot carry text messages, so SMS is not available on them.

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What is never billed

  • Texts you receive, in every country and on every plan, including replies from your customers
  • A message that fails. If it does not reach the network, nothing is charged for it
  • Domestic calling, which is unrelated to SMS and included in your plan

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Before you can send

Two countries ask for a one-time registration before a number can text: 10DLC in the United States and Canada, a one-off $24 for the whole company, and a Sender ID in France, free, for automated messages only. The United Kingdom and Belgium ask for nothing.

Set up texting

The steps, the fees and the approval times, per country
Sending texts requires the Business plan. Every plan receives them, and receiving is always free.

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Texting a number in another country

Not available today. A text goes to a number in the same country as your Allo number, so a French number texts French numbers and a US number texts US numbers. If you need to reach a number abroad, contact support and we will tell you where that stands for your account.

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Keeping the cost down

Four edits account for most unexpectedly expensive messages.
Templates and automatic replies are where this compounds. A single emoji in a template used a thousand times a month doubles the cost of a thousand messages, not one.

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FAQ

Because one character in it is not in the standard SMS alphabet. A single emoji, a curly apostrophe or a letter like ç or ê switches the whole message to Unicode, where a segment holds 70 characters instead of 160.
In France, slightly: $0.06 per segment instead of $0.05, because operators route automated messages separately. In the United States and Canada, texts you type yourself are included and only automated messages are metered, at $0.01 per segment. In the United Kingdom and Belgium the rate is identical either way.
Yes. Sending the same 2-segment message to 50 contacts is 100 segments.
Admins can review usage in Settings > Billing. Only workspace admins can see it.
Yes. Sending requires the Business plan. Every plan receives texts, so a Solo line still gets everything a customer sends.
That is usually compliance registration rather than cost. Work through SMS troubleshooting.

Set up texting

10DLC, Sender ID, and how long each takes

SMS & messaging

What texting does, and what works in each country

SMS troubleshooting

Texts that will not send, or come back failed

International calling

Per-minute rates and how calls are billed