Send SMS to India
from $0.0135/msg

smsroute delivers SMS to any Indian mobile number from $0.0135 per message with DLT-ready templates included. Routes reach Jio, Airtel, Vi, and BSNL via our Singapore POP with 231 ms median latency and 98.4% delivery success. Payment in Bitcoin, USDT (TRC-20/ERC-20), Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, or Solana. No KYC at signup. Shared DLT headers available for low-volume senders; bring your own header + template_id if you already have TRAI entity registration.

India's 4 DLT Template Categories — And Why the Wrong One Quietly Kills Your Delivery

DLT splits every A2P SMS into one of four categories, and the category you register a template under dictates what's allowed. Miscategorization is the #1 reason TRAI issues notices and the #2 reason messages go BLOCKED at delivery. Get the category wrong and the operator gateway quietly kills the send — no error at the handset, just a "BLOCKED" status in your webhook that you won't notice until a customer complains their OTP never arrived. Here's what each category actually means:

Promotional. Marketing content — offers, sales, new product launches, discount codes. Sends allowed only between 10:00 and 21:00 IST. Recipients on the National Do Not Call (NDNC) registry are automatically scrubbed — operators drop promotional SMS to any number registered under Fully Blocked or Partially Blocked DND preferences. Throughput is the lowest of the four categories; operators rate-limit promotional senders aggressively when complaint rates spike.

Transactional. Historical category, now effectively deprecated for non-banking senders. Reserved for RBI-licensed entities sending banking SMS. Deliverable 24/7 to all numbers including DND. If you are not a bank, NBFC, or insurance provider regulated by IRDAI, you cannot register Transactional — use Service-Explicit instead.

Service-Explicit. Messages the user has explicitly opted into — OTPs, delivery updates, appointment confirmations, password resets, booking acknowledgments. Deliverable 24/7 to all numbers regardless of DND status. This is the category most SaaS and ecommerce senders will live in. NDNC scrubbing does not apply. Throughput is the highest of the four categories, with tier-1 operators typically permitting 30-100 TPS per header out of the box.

Service-Implicit. Messages arising from an ongoing customer relationship but not explicitly requested in the current transaction — account balance updates, statement reminders, service expiry notices, policy-renewal nudges. Deliverable 24/7 to DND numbers because of the implicit opt-in via account relationship. Throughput mid-tier; NDNC scrubbing does not apply.

Pricing vs competitors

Prices as of April 2026 from each provider's public pricing page. smsroute lands ~45% below Twilio and 27% below Plivo on the Indian route. Against the India-native aggregators (MSG91, Textlocal), smsroute's edge is the shared-DLT option for indie developers and the crypto billing — India-native aggregators almost universally require INR billing and GST registration.

Mobile operators in India

India's mobile market has been through a brutal restructuring since Reliance Jio launched in late 2016 with free voice and near-free data. What was once a seven-to-nine-operator market is now a four-operator consolidation, and effectively a three-horse race on retail SMS volume.

Reliance Jio. Market leader with ~40% share. Jio is the operator that triggered the consolidation — its entry bankrupted several rivals and forced Idea Cellular into the Vodafone merger that became Vi. Jio's DLT portal (trueconnect.jio.com) is the most-used of the four and typically has the fastest template turnaround — under 24 hours for straightforward templates.

Airtel India. ~32% share. Bharti Airtel's SmartPing platform manages its DLT entity and template registry. Airtel is the most latency-consistent operator on our Singapore route, averaging 195 ms on the operator leg.

Vi (Vodafone Idea). ~19% share, down from near-30% pre-Jio. Result of the 2018 Vodafone India + Idea Cellular merger, now operating jointly under the "Vi" brand. Financial distress has slowed its 4G expansion and, at the edges of coverage, its delivery receipts. Templates on VilPower typically take 36-48 hours versus Jio's 12-24.

BSNL. ~9% share. State-owned, primarily rural, slowest 4G rollout of the four. Delivery to BSNL numbers is functional but latency runs higher (340-420 ms p50 on the operator leg) and template turnaround on ucc-bsnl.co.in is 48-72 hours in our experience.

How to send SMS to India in 3 steps

Step 1 — Create an account and attach your DLT header

Sign up at smsroute.cc. In the dashboard under Senders → India DLT, paste your 6-character header and at least one approved template_id, or opt into the shared pool for indie-dev traffic.

Step 2 — Top up with crypto

Minimum $5. USDT (TRC-20 preferred for low fees) credits in ~1 minute. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, and Solana also accepted.

Step 3 — Send with the DLT fields in the payload

The India route requires template_id and the registered header as from. Anything else returns DLT_FIELD_MISSING.

The API validates your body against the registered template_id before submission. If the variable-substituted body doesn't fit the registered pattern, you get DLT_TEMPLATE_MISMATCH back with a diff of where the drift occurred — most useful during integration testing.

curl -X POST https://api.smsroute.cc/v1/messages \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SMSROUTE_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "to": "+919812345678",
    "from": "ACMEIN",
    "body": "Hi Priya, your OTP is 384921. Valid 10 min. - Acme",
    "template_id": "1007161234567890123",
    "dlt_category": "service_explicit"
  }'

import requests, os

r = requests.post(
    "https://api.smsroute.cc/v1/messages",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SMSROUTE_API_KEY']}"},
    json={
        "to": "+919812345678",
        "from": "ACMEIN",
        "body": "Hi Priya, your OTP is 384921. Valid 10 min. - Acme",
        "template_id": "1007161234567890123",
        "dlt_category": "service_explicit"
    }
)
print(r.json())

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: "+915551234567",
    from: "smsroute",
    text: "Your verification code is 384921",
  }),
});

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