GoHighLevel SMS & Phone Pricing 2026: Real Cost per Text

GoHighLevel SMS pricing looks simple on paper: $0.00747 per text segment in the US and Canada. That is not what a text costs you, though. Carriers add their own fee to every segment, long messages count as two or three texts, replies are billed too, and a local number needs A2P registration before it can send at all. When I add it all up, one plain text costs about 1.1 to 1.2 cents, and 1,000 texts a month come to roughly $14 to $24 once the number and registration fees are in. Below I go through every rate in HighLevel's phone pricing guide, show four real monthly bills, and point out the places where HighLevel's own help pages disagree with each other.

What one text really costs in GoHighLevel

HighLevel's Phone System Pricing & Billing Guide was last updated on 12 October 2026, and it is the page I used for every rate below. For a normal text from a US number to a US mobile, you pay two things: the segment rate, and a fee set by the carrier of the person you text.

So the honest answer to "what does a GoHighLevel text cost" is a bit over one cent, not three quarters of a cent. You can't pick which carrier your contacts use, so I always budget with the high end.

The rate is the same whichever plan you are on. The $97 Starter, $297 Unlimited and $497 Agency Pro plans all pay per segment from the wallet, and none of them includes a bundle of free texts.

If you open your own account and look for the rate, you may see a different number. In the agency settings, go to Billing, then Wallet & Transactions, then the Pricing tab, and search for SMS. My account shows Outbound SMS at $0.0083 per segment.

SMS and MMS rates for the US and Canada

Here are the base rates from the 12 October guide. A segment is one chunk of up to 160 plain characters, which I explain further down.

A few things in that table matter more than they look:

• Replies cost money. HighLevel charges inbound and outbound SMS at the same rate. If you run a two-way campaign, every reply is billed too.
• Local and toll-free numbers text at the same SMS rate. The difference is the monthly rent and the registration, not the per-text price.
• Pictures are about three times the price. An MMS is $0.0220 out before carrier fees. HighLevel's MMS limit is up to 10 media files and 5 MB in total.
• You pay for the attempt, not the delivery. If HighLevel has an internal error before it hands the text to the provider, there is no charge. Once a delivery attempt is made, the text is billed whatever happens, and undelivered texts are not refunded.

HighLevel's guide calls MMS pricing "per segment". In my examples I treat one MMS as one charge, which is how a single picture message with short text normally works out.

Carrier fees, and what changed on 1 October 2026

Carrier fees are passed straight through from the recipient's mobile carrier. They are charged per segment on top of the SMS or MMS rate, so a two-segment text pays the carrier fee twice.

The outbound carrier fee table

HighLevel's guide to calculating SMS costs suggests using about $0.005 as the carrier fee when you don't know who your contacts are with. That is close to the top of the table, which is why I like it for budgets.

The 1 October 2026 change

Two of those fees went up recently. HighLevel's carrier fee changelog says that from 1 October 2026:

• Verizon outbound SMS went from $0.0045 to $0.0050 per message, for long code, short code and toll-free numbers.
• "Other" carriers went from $0.0040 to $0.0042.

Nothing needed doing on your side. The new fees were applied automatically. If you built a cost sheet before October, update those two numbers.

Inbound carrier fees: why I leave them out

How segments work (and why your bill can double)

Everything above is per segment, so the length of your message matters as much as the rate. These are the rules from HighLevel's cost guide:

• Plain text (GSM-7) fits 160 characters in one segment. 161 to 320 characters is 2 segments, and 321 to 480 is 3.
• One emoji, or any character outside the plain set such as Arabic or Chinese script, switches the whole message to Unicode (UCS-2). Then one segment holds only 70 characters, and longer messages split into parts of 67.
• Text pasted from Word or Google Docs can carry hidden characters. HighLevel shows "Hey there" turning into 4 segments that way.

My fix for hidden characters is simple: paste as plain text with Ctrl+Shift+V on Windows or Cmd+Shift+V on a Mac. And I keep emojis out of automated messages. One smiley on a 100-character reminder can turn it into a two-segment text and double what you pay for every contact in the workflow.

If you read HighLevel's cost guide, its examples come out higher than mine, for example $0.0133 for one segment. That is because it uses the $0.0083 list price and a flat $0.005 carrier fee.

Phone number and call pricing

Numbers are billed monthly. You buy one in the sub-account under Settings, then Phone System, then Manage Numbers and Add Number, where you can search by area code and filter by number type. I didn't buy one for this guide, so there is no screenshot of that step.

Calls are billed per minute, and every partial minute rounds up to a full one. These are HighLevel's US and Canada rates:

Three of those catch people out:

• Recording storage never stops. Every stored recording, old ones included, is charged every month until you delete it, and HighLevel bills it daily. To limit it, go to the sub-account's Settings, then Phone Numbers, Advanced Settings, Voice Calls and Call Recording, and set older recordings to delete automatically.
• Every outgoing call is a conference call. HighLevel starts one on all outgoing calls so transfers are quick, so you pay the conference leg even if you never transfer anyone.
• Forwarding costs two legs. A call forwarded to your mobile is billed as the incoming leg plus an outgoing leg, which is why it is $0.02 a minute.

Answering machine detection is $0.0075 per call. Unanswered calls with no voicemail are "generally not charged", according to HighLevel's pricing guide. These are plain phone minutes. If you want an AI agent to take the calls, that is billed separately, and I cover it in my GoHighLevel Voice AI guide.

A2P 10DLC fees on top

A local 10-digit number can't text US mobiles until you register a brand and a campaign for A2P 10DLC. You do that in the sub-account's Trust Center. These are the fees from HighLevel's A2P fees page:

The one-time fee includes a $3 Fast Track charge. The monthly fee depends on the campaign type: $1.50 for Low Volume Mixed and $10 for a standard campaign. A few more rules:

• Another campaign under the same brand costs a $15 vetting fee.
• Resubmitting a rejected campaign has been free since 1 February 2026.
• Both fees start as soon as you submit, whatever the result. Delete a campaign to stop its monthly fee.

HighLevel's main pricing guide shows these as "up to $2.10" and "$10.50". That is the same fee plus the 5% pass-through markup I explain in the rebilling section. The A2P page itself says no markup. My worked examples use the base fees. The registration steps are in my GoHighLevel A2P 10DLC registration guide.

Toll-free numbers skip A2P completely. They need GoHighLevel toll-free verification instead, and I couldn't find a published fee for that.

What a real month costs: 4 worked examples

These are my own estimates from the rates above. All are US texts of one segment, with the AT&T carrier fee as the low end and Verizon as the high end, before any rebilling markup.

1. 1,000 texts a month from a local number

The texts themselves are only about half of the bill at this volume. The A2P campaign fee is the biggest swing.

2. The same 1,000 texts from a toll-free number

Swap the local number for a toll-free one at $2.15 and drop the A2P fees. The monthly bill is $13.12 to $14.62, and there is no one-time registration fee. The catch is the verification wait, which HighLevel says can take weeks.

3. Longer messages (2 segments)

Send the same 1,000 messages at 161 to 320 characters, or with one emoji in a mid-length text, and the usage alone becomes $21.94 to $24.94 instead of $10.97 to $12.47. Same contacts, same number, double the texting cost.

4. A small business: texts, replies and calls

Add any inbound carrier fees on the replies, which I can't pin down (see above), and the conference leg on outgoing calls. If calls are forwarded to a mobile instead of answered in the app, use $0.02 a minute for those. For comparison, 5,000 one-segment texts a month would be $54.85 to $62.35 in usage alone.

How you're billed: the wallet and auto recharge

You don't get an SMS invoice at the end of the month. HighLevel charges your card to load a wallet, and every text, call and number is taken out of that balance. On an agency account the wallet is under Settings, then Billing, then Wallet & Transactions, then Wallet & Recharge.

Here is how it works, from HighLevel's auto recharge guide:

• Recharge Amount is what gets charged to your card each time. Low Balance Limit is the balance that triggers it.
• Auto recharge cannot be turned off. You can only change the two amounts.
• Smart Adjustment raises your recharge amount to the next level if the same amount is triggered more than 3 times in 7 days. That one you can switch off, from the menu next to the recharge settings.

This explains a question HighLevel answers in its own FAQ: "I was billed $20 right away but haven't made any calls." That is the wallet topping up because the balance fell below the threshold. The money isn't spent yet. It sits in the wallet for later texts and calls.

To see what you actually paid, open the Transactions tab and filter by sub-account or product. To check a current rate, use the Pricing tab from the first screenshot. HighLevel calls that page the central source of truth for wallet rates.

Rebilling SMS to clients ($297 vs $497) and the 5% markup

If you run an agency, HighLevel charges your agency wallet first, and you can then pass the cost on to each client. What you can do depends on the plan:

• $97 Starter: no rebilling. You pay for your clients' texts yourself.
• $297 Unlimited: rebilling at cost. The client pays exactly what HighLevel charged you.
• $497 Agency Pro: rebilling with your own markup, as part of SaaS mode.

The markup lives in the agency view under Reselling. In my account it is on the Usage tab, under Phone System, as a Your Markup slider from 1x to 10x. HighLevel's guide calls the same setting the Resell Amount under Core Services, so the label you see may differ.

On top of your own markup, HighLevel adds a fixed 5% to certain pass-through charges at the sub-account level: A2P fees, SMS and MMS carrier fees, Verified Caller ID and RCS carrier fees. HighLevel's own example in the pricing guide:

On 1,000 texts, the 5% turns $3.50 to $5.00 of carrier fees into $3.68 to $5.25. Small, but worth knowing when a client asks why the numbers don't match the rate card.

LC Phone vs your own Twilio account

LC Phone is HighLevel's built-in phone system. You don't need a Twilio account or keys, billing comes out of the wallet in real time, and SaaS rebilling works with it. You can still connect your own Twilio account instead.

HighLevel says LC Phone pricing matches Twilio's, then takes 10% off US and Canada numbers, texts and calls. Its older general pricing guide, from August 2026, still says the price is "precisely the same amount as Twilio". The 12 October phone guide is newer and shows the discount, so I follow that. Outside the US and Canada there is no discount.

You can move sub-accounts from Twilio to LC Phone one at a time, or all US and Canada ones at once. A2P registration made in your own Twilio account doesn't carry over, so those sub-accounts have to register again. HighLevel's migration guide also says old recordings and voicemails stay in Twilio.

One risk worth knowing about comes from users, not from HighLevel. A post on HighLevel's ideas board says that on LC Phone an SMS compliance suspension can take calling down on the same number too, which the poster says doesn't happen with direct Twilio. If calls are critical for a client, keep their texting clean and registered.

International SMS rates

The price of a text is set by the country you send it to, not the number you send from. A text from a US number to an Australian mobile is billed at the Australian rate. These rates come from the messaging price list attached to HighLevel's pricing guide:

So 1,000 texts to the UK cost $52.40, more than four times the real US cost per text. A UK number rents for $1.15 a month in the same price list, and an Australian local number for $3.00.

On 13 October 2026 HighLevel raised SMS prices for 12 countries, including Albania, Moldova, Nepal and Nicaragua, and number rents in 11, such as Belgium, Hong Kong and the Philippines. None of the countries in my table were on that list. The attached price list still shows some of the old figures, so for any other country I check the Pricing tab in the wallet before quoting a client.

How I keep the SMS bill down

• Write templates under 160 characters. This saves more than anything else, because it halves both the segment and carrier fee on long messages.
• No emojis in automations. One emoji drops the segment limit to 70 characters.
• Paste as plain text so hidden characters don't add segments.
• Turn on Number Validation for imported lists. It costs $0.005 per check and stops texts to invalid numbers. For 1,000 new contacts that is $5, and it shows on invoices as a carrier lookup fee on the first text to each contact. It comes bundled with spam detection and caller name lookup on incoming calls, which are charged separately.
• Delete A2P campaigns you no longer use, or the monthly fee keeps running.
• Send long content by email. HighLevel email is $0.675 per 1,000, and a dedicated sending domain helps it land in the inbox.
• Set recordings to auto-delete so storage fees don't pile up.
• Don't text from a number that isn't approved yet. Blocked texts are still billed.

If your customers prefer WhatsApp, that is billed completely differently, with a monthly fee and per-message rates set by Meta. I cover it in my GoHighLevel WhatsApp pricing guide.

Common questions