Compare SMS Providers for Australian business
SMS Comparison compares Australian SMS gateway, API and mass-texting providers on what they publish. Published Australian-dollar rates at 15,000 messages a month run from 3.00c (Mobile Message) to 13.00c (Telstra) per SMS, a 4.3x spread. Enter your monthly volume and the board re-ranks every provider at your tier.
Rate at your volume
Costs per SMS · AUD · verified 2026-09-09| Lane | Provider | Rate | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Mobile Message | 3.00c | $450 |
| 02 | Cellcast | 3.10c | $465 |
| 03 | Guni SMS | 4.30c | $645 |
| 04 | MessageWorks | 5.00c | $750 |
| 05 | Chatti | 5.90c | $885 |
| 06 | SMS Broadcast | 6.00c | $900 |
| 07 | ClickSend | 6.70c | $1,005 |
| 08 | Textmagic | 7.00c | $1,050 |
| 09 | Kudosity | 7.90c | $1,185 |
| 10 | Vision6 | 8.90c | $1,335 |
| 11 | Telstra | 13.00c | $1,950 |
At 15,000 messages a month you are on the 15K tier. Mobile Message is cheapest at 3.00c ($450 a month); Telstra is dearest at 13.00c ($1,950). Spread: 4.3x.
Showing 11 of the 44 brands the site reviews. 4 more publish their Australian rate in a foreign currency and are not sorted against these: Twilio (USD), Bird (USD), Vonage (USD), Clickatell (USD). The other 29 publish no Australian rate that can be priced at this volume; each review says what that brand publishes instead.
Rate shown is each provider's published Australian price at the volume tier at or below yours. Above 250,000 messages most providers negotiate. Full price table for all providers.
Top rated Australian SMS providers
11 of the 44 providers we review publish an Australian-dollar rate that maps onto a monthly volume, and 5 of those also carry a score out of 10. The other 6 are priced and reviewed but not yet scored. 5 can be ranked here, because a place on this list needs both a score and a published rate at 15,000 messages a month.
- Lane 01 Cellcast Cellcast sells fixed prepaid credit bundles rather than pricing on monthly volume, so every rate here is the cheapest published combination of bundles that covers the month: 3.7c at 1,000, 3.1c at 15,000 and 2.83c at both 125,000 and 250,000. Mobile Message publishes 3.5c and 3.0c at the lower two volumes and 2.5c at the upper two, so Cellcast is second cheapest in Australian dollars at all four rather than cheapest at any, which several older pages on this site still say it is. Above 100,000 messages a month Cellcast asks you to contact it for a quote, so a large sender may do better than the published figure. Shared numbers and replies are free and credits never expire. Its two absolute claims, a 100% uptime SLA and a 100% delivery guarantee, are published without any supporting document, and its pricing page advertises a lowest-price rating attributed to this site while deep-linking our own comparison table.at 15K 3.10c 9.0/10
- Lane 02 Chatti Chatti publishes a four-band monthly volume table in Australian dollars, 6.9c under 2,000 falling to 5.5c from 100,000, with free inbound, a published 99.99% uptime SLA and free 24/7 support from a Brisbane base. The row for 200,000 and above is blank, so there is no published rate at that volume. Its public review base is nine Trustpilot reviews, seven of them dated November 2021, and its pricing page footer reads "in partnership with Vonage" alongside the 100% Australian owned claim.at 15K 5.90c 8.5/10
- Lane 03 ClickSend ClickSend publishes 24/7 support, a 99.95% uptime SLA, a status page and an outage procedure, and its 3,569 Trustpilot reviews are the largest public sample in this file. Its rate falls with the size of a single top-up rather than with monthly volume, so the cheapest published rate is a working-capital decision as much as a pricing one. It was founded in Perth in 2013. MessageMedia bought ClickSend in 2019; Sinch then acquired MessageMedia, the deal announced 9 June 2021 and completed 5 November 2021, with ClickSend already named as a MessageMedia sub-brand in Sinch's own announcement. ClickSend's own site instead states it "joined the Sinch Group in 2022", a year the Sinch investor record does not support.at 15K 6.70c 8.3/10
- Lane 04 SMS Broadcast SMS Broadcast states onshore connections with Telstra, Optus and Vodafone, the only onshore routing claim naming all three networks in this file; Clickatell's Australia page names the same three among sixteen networks but makes no onshore claim. Its recharge rate opens at 7.0c on the 500-credit band and falls to 5.5c from 100,000 credits, while first purchases sit at a flat 4.2c. It trades under Sinch MessageMedia ownership, publishes no uptime figure and no support hours, and its credits expire after 12 months.at 15K 6.00c 7.3/10
- Lane 05 Telstra Telstra is the only Australian carrier in this comparison and the most expensive published rate in it, at 14c for a month of 1,000 messages falling to 11c at 125,000, excluding GST, on the SMS Access Manager ladder in Our Customer Terms Part J. Mobile Message publishes 3.5c to 2.5c across the same four volumes, so a buyer pays Telstra roughly four times as much per message. What the premium buys is a direct carrier relationship rather than an aggregator, which is the reason a large sender chooses it. Requesting delivery receipts adds a cent at every tier. The tiers also carry minimum monthly charges, from $1,273 at 10,000 messages to $102,273 above 1.5 million, though at each of the four benchmark volumes the messages themselves cost more than the minimum, so the minimum does not set the price.at 15K 13.00c 6.7/10
How SMS Comparison scores a provider
A scored provider gets one score out of 10, built from published pricing at four volume tiers, feature documentation and support terms. The same criteria apply to a two-person clinic sending reminders and an enterprise pushing a million one-time passcodes.
No provider pays for a position on this site. Some pay a commission when a visitor signs up through our link. That commission is disclosed on every review and does not touch the score. Read the full scoring methodology.
- C-01 Price Published cents per SMS at 1K, 15K, 125K, 250K a month, plus number and setup fees.
- C-02 Numbers Sender ID registration support, shared number verification, and alphanumeric sender ID availability.
- C-03 API Documented REST API, SDKs, email to SMS, and CRM connectors.
- C-04 Routes Direct carrier connections the provider states, and where traffic is routed.
- C-05 Support Channels, hours, Australian phone support, and money-back terms.
Start with what you need to send
Three questions decide which of our guides you need. Pick the one that matches the job.
Campaigns and promotions
Marketing traffic needs keywords, opt-in capture, scheduling and Spam Act consent taken before the first send.
Transactional and API
Order alerts, passcodes and app notifications run through an API. Check per-segment pricing, not just the headline rate.
Reminders and email to SMS
Appointment reminders and staff alerts rarely justify an integration. Email to SMS sends from an inbox you already have, and replies land back in it.
What every Australian sender has to sort out first
Australian carriers police application-to-person traffic closely. Three facts change which provider, and which number type, you should buy.
Every commercial SMS in Australia needs consent, must identify the sender, and must carry a working unsubscribe. The ACMA enforces it, and the obligations land on the sender, not the provider.
The ACMA SMS Sender ID Register commenced on 1 July 2026. Register your sender ID through your provider and your brand name shows; leave it unregistered and the carrier replaces it with the word Unverified. The message still arrives.
A dedicated virtual mobile number for two-way SMS is a published monthly fee on top of the per-message rate. Compare it with the rate, not instead of it.
Read the SMS gateway guide, including number types, throughput and routing.
Questions before you compare
Short answers. Each links to the guide that holds the detail.
What does a business SMS cost in Australia?
Published Australian-dollar rates run from 2.50c to 14.00c per outbound SMS depending on provider and volume. At 15,000 a month the spread is 3.00c to 13.00c. Inbound is often free. See the price table.
Which is the cheapest SMS provider in Australia?
On published Australian-dollar rates, Mobile Message at 3.50c falling to 2.50c at 250K. The cheap SMS provider guide compares fees as well as rates.
Why are some providers not ranked?
The site reviews more brands than it can rank. A provider is in the priced comparison when it trades under the name we review it under and publishes a per-message rate, in Australian dollars, that maps onto a monthly volume. 11 of the 44 we review do. Another 4 publish an Australian rate in US cents, which we name with its currency rather than convert or sort against an AUD column. The rest price on prepaid credit or a monthly plan, publish nothing, or have been renamed, absorbed or withdrawn. The reason is printed beside each one.
What does the Spam Act require?
Consent from every recipient, a clear sender identity and a working unsubscribe in every commercial message. The provider gives you the tools; the ACMA enforces it against you as the sender.
SMS gateway or SMS API: what is the difference?
A gateway is the provider's service that hands messages to the carriers. The API is the developer interface to that gateway. Most providers here offer both plus a web dashboard.
How does SMS Comparison make money?
Affiliate commission when you sign up through a link on this site. No provider pays for placement, and commission never changes a score. Full disclosure is on every review.
The people behind the scores
Justin Grossbard
Founder and Chief Executive OfficerJustin founded SMS Comparison and sets the scoring method. He signs off every provider score.
Alain Grossbard
Head of StrategyAlain compiles the Australian provider data and writes the reviews behind the rate panel and the price tables.
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