Send SMS to France
from $0.0220/msg

import fetch from "node-fetch";

const apiKey = process.env.SMSROUTE_API_KEY;

const res = await fetch("https://api.smsroute.cc/v1/sms/send", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${apiKey}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    to: "+335551234567",
    from: "smsroute",
    text: "Your verification code is 384921",
  }),
});

console.log(await res.json());

import requests, os

r = requests.post(
    "https://api.smsroute.cc/v1/messages",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SMSROUTE_API_KEY']}"},
    json={
        "to": "+33612345678",
        "from": "AcmeShop",
        "body": "Votre code de verification: 384921. Valable 10 min. STOP au 36200 pour ne plus recevoir."
    }
)
print(r.json())

curl -X POST https://api.smsroute.cc/v1/messages \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SMSROUTE_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "to": "+33612345678",
    "from": "AcmeShop",
    "body": "Votre code de verification: 384921. Valable 10 min. STOP au 36200 pour ne plus recevoir."
  }'

package main

import (
    "bytes"
    "encoding/json"
    "fmt"
    "io"
    "net/http"
    "os"
)

func main() {
    payload, _ := json.Marshal(map[string]string{
        "to":   "+335551234567",
        "from": "smsroute",
        "text": "Your verification code is 384921",
    })

    req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST",
        "https://api.smsroute.cc/v1/sms/send",
        bytes.NewBuffer(payload))
    req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("SMSROUTE_API_KEY"))
    req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")

    resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
    if err != nil { panic(err) }
    defer resp.Body.Close()

    body, _ := io.ReadAll(resp.Body)
    fmt.Println(string(body))
}

<?php
$apiKey = getenv('SMSROUTE_API_KEY');

$payload = json_encode([
    'to'   => '+335551234567',
    'from' => 'smsroute',
    'text' => 'Your verification code is 384921',
], JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);

$ch = curl_init('https://api.smsroute.cc/v1/sms/send');
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_POST => true,
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
        'Authorization: Bearer ' . $apiKey,
        'Content-Type: application/json',
    ],
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $payload,
]);

echo curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

Mobile operators in France

France has a four-operator market, stable since Free Mobile's disruptive launch in 2012. No operator-consolidation deals are in progress as of 2026.

Orange France. ~37% revenue share, the incumbent national operator, majority state-indirect via Bpifrance. Runs the largest 5G and fibre networks. Our lowest-latency route interconnects directly with Orange at the Paris peering point — 140 ms median.

SFR. ~27% share, owned by Altice France (Patrick Drahi). The company carries a high debt load from the Altice acquisition, which surfaces occasionally in network-investment delays. Interconnect via carrier-of-carriers link — 151 ms median.

Bouygues Telecom. ~19% share, part of the Bouygues SA conglomerate. Announced a network-sharing deal with SFR in 2024 for rural 5G. Interconnect — 149 ms median.

Free Mobile. ~17% share, the Iliad SA challenger launched in 2012 that forced the other three carriers to drop prices. Operates its own FTTH network in parallel to the mobile business. Free tends to be the aggressive edge-pricing operator. Interconnect via Iliad peering — 158 ms median.

Pricing vs competitors

Prices as of April 2026, sourced from each provider's public pricing page. smsroute's $0.022 is 40% below Twilio's $0.067. The discount is structural: we route directly to Orange, SFR, Bouygues, and Free Mobile without an additional aggregator hop, and we operate on crypto-only payment rails that eliminate 3-5% card-processor fees.

Latency + delivery success rate

Rolling 90-day delivery success rate: 99.3% blended. The 0.7% failure pool splits roughly as 50% handset-off > 48h, 25% ported-number routing glitches (historically worst on Free Mobile), 15% sender-ID rewrite to long code, 10% residual.

CNIL prospection commerciale — what counts as soft opt-in

The CNIL's prospection commerciale guidance, last updated in February 2022, distinguishes B2C from B2B rules and defines a narrow soft opt-in for existing customers. It sits under Article 21 of the Loi Informatique et Libertés (LIL) as transposed from the ePrivacy Directive Art. 13.

B2C cold prospection. Explicit prior consent required, full stop. The consent must be specific, informed, unambiguous, and freely given (Art. 4(11) GDPR). Bundled consents, pre-ticked boxes, and consent collected at service signup that blankets "marketing from us and our partners" all fail. This is the hardest path — only useful if you have your own first-party consent collection.

B2C soft opt-in (existing customer exemption). If you collected the phone number during the sale of a product or service, you may send prospection SMS for similar products from the same brand, provided three conditions are met: (1) at collection, the recipient was clearly told the number would be used for this purpose; (2) every subsequent SMS includes an opt-out mechanism (STOP to 36XXX short code); (3) the products advertised are materially similar to the original purchase. The CNIL has explicitly rejected attempts to stretch "similar" across corporate-group brands or materially different product lines.

B2B prospection. Prior consent is not required where the recipient is reached in their professional capacity, on a professional number, and the communication relates to their professional role. The recipient must still have a simple opt-out available. A message to jean.dupont@entreprise.fr or a corporate mobile qualifies; a message to jean.dupont@gmail.com sourced from a B2B enrichment vendor does not.

Sender ID rules + Bloctel integration pattern

French operators accept alphanumeric sender IDs up to 11 characters, Latin alphabet, no spaces. There is no formal ARCEP pre-registration requirement for commercial senders, but Orange and SFR run spam-filter heuristics that rewrite unregistered alphanumerics to a generic long code on suspicious A2P traffic. Register your sender ID with smsroute in advance to keep the branded ID intact.

The recommended integration pattern for French B2C prospection is a scrub-before-send pipeline that queries Opposetel's Bloctel API before each campaign and only fires smsroute sends against the scrubbed list.

import requests, os, datetime, json

# 1. Scrub your list against Bloctel (via Opposetel API)
scrub_response = requests.post(
    "https://api.opposetel.fr/v2/scrub",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['OPPOSETEL_KEY']}"},
    json={"numbers": ["+33612345678", "+33698765432", "+33712121212"]}
)
scrubbed = scrub_response.json()["survivors"]
scrub_receipt_id = scrub_response.json()["receipt_id"]
scrub_ts = datetime.datetime.utcnow().isoformat()

# 2. Log the scrub receipt for 3-year audit trail (Art. L. 223-1 obligation)
with open("bloctel_scrubs.jsonl", "a") as f:
    f.write(json.dumps({
        "receipt_id": scrub_receipt_id,
        "timestamp_utc": scrub_ts,
        "input_count": 3,
        "survivor_count": len(scrubbed)
    }) + "\n")

# 3. Send through smsroute only to survivors
for number in scrubbed:
    requests.post(
        "https://api.smsroute.cc/v1/messages",
        headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SMSROUTE_API_KEY']}"},
        json={
            "to": number,
            "from": "AcmeShop",
            "body": "Nouveautes printemps. -20% avec code PRINT20. STOP au 36200."
        }
    )

Frequently asked questions

Related pages

• SMS pricing (all 149 countries)
• Send SMS to Germany · Send SMS to United Kingdom
• smsroute vs Twilio

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