Compare Australian SMS Providers
Find the best SMS provider for your business with our in-depth reviews and comparisons
What will it actually cost?
Providers sell SMS three different ways here: a rate against a minimum top-up, a monthly bundle with an overage rate, and one that bills in US dollars. Enter what you send and every provider is costed the same way.
Compare every provider
Enter what you send and see what each provider would charge.
| # | Provider | Plan | Per month | Effective | vs cheapest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | touchSMSfree inbound | Pay as you go | $250.00 | 5.00c | cheapest |
| 2 | Sinch Engage | Pro | $348.00 | 6.96c | +$98.00 |
| 3 | Twiliobilled in USD | Standard | $357.85 | 7.16c | +$107.85 |
| 4 | ClickSendfree inbound | Boost | $360.00 | 7.20c | +$110.00 |
Rates checked 4 September 2026 from each provider's published pricing. Twilio publishes and bills in USD, converted here at 1.3897 AUD (rate from 2026-09-04) so the totals are comparable. Your actual cost moves with the exchange rate and any conversion fee your bank charges. Excludes carrier fees and GST; touchSMS quotes ex GST. Messages over 160 characters count as more than one.
Price is one input. The cheapest provider for your volume may still be the wrong choice if you need a dashboard your team can use without a developer, a named account manager, or a negotiated SLA. The reviews cover those differences.
Two of these providers, ClickSend and Sinch Engage, are owned by the same parent company, so a tender between them is not the competitive process it looks like.
Latest comparisons
How we compare SMS providers
Australian SMS pricing is harder to compare than it looks. Headline rates are quoted per message, but the price you actually pay depends on your monthly volume, whether messages are billed per part, and whether the provider charges separately for replies, dedicated numbers or sender ID registration.
We look at each provider on the things that determine cost and reliability in practice:
- Pricing at real volumes
- What a send actually costs at 1,000, 10,000 and 100,000 messages a month, including the fees that sit outside the headline rate.
- Deliverability and routing
- Whether the provider uses direct carrier routes, and how that affects delivery rates and speed to Telstra, Optus and Vodafone.
- API quality
- Batch sending, delivery receipts, inbound replies and webhook reliability. The things your developers will actually hit.
- Support and compliance
- Local support hours, SLAs, and handling of sender ID rules and the Australian SMS code of practice.