Send SMS to United Arab Emirates
from $0.0520/msg

Reach 19 million subscribers across Etisalat (55% market share) and du (45%) with 99.3% delivery success, 85 ms median latency, and 32% savings versus Twilio. No KYC at signup — pay with Bitcoin, USDT, Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, or Solana. TRA sender ID registration and KYC verification are completed before your first marketing SMS, ensuring compliance with the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority's explicit opt-in framework and quiet-hour rules.

Why Arabic SMS Segments Cut Your UAE Character Budget in Half

The UAE is a multilingual market where Arabic is the primary business language for government, banking, and retail. When you send a message in Arabic—or any non-Latin script—your SMS is encoded in UCS-2 rather than GSM-7. This encoding doubles the byte footprint of each character, reducing the segment capacity from 160 characters to 70.

In practice, a 210-character Arabic message consumes 3 SMS segments on Etisalat and du networks, costing $0.156 at smsroute's $0.0520/segment rate. The same content in English (480 characters) fits into 3 GSM-7 segments at the same cost. When budgeting for a UAE campaign, if you plan to use Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, or any right-to-left or multibyte script, multiply your estimated character count by a factor of 2.3 to calculate true segment spend.

Example: A bank sending a transactional OTP message—"رمز التحقق الخاص بك هو: 123456" (Your verification code is: 123456)—is 45 characters in Arabic but encodes as 90 UCS-2 bytes, consuming 2 segments instead of 1. Budget accordingly, and consider reserving separate SMS flows for Arabic and English content to optimize per-message cost.

Mobile Operators: Etisalat UAE and du

Etisalat UAE (Emirates Telecommunications Corporation) controls 55% of the UAE mobile market, serving approximately 10.5 million subscribers across the country. Etisalat operates dual networks: primary mobile (prefix 50) and a legacy network. Interconnection with smsroute is direct via Tier-1 agreements, ensuring priority routing and <2-minute delivery SLAs for compliant traffic.

du (Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company) holds 45% market share with roughly 8.5 million subscribers. du also operates a primary network (prefix 50 and variants) and offers competitive interconnection terms. du is more stringent on sender ID registration and KYC verification, requiring additional compliance documentation for banking and government senders. Both operators reject SMS from unregistered sender IDs by default, converting them to numeric shortcodes or blocking them outright.

Pricing: smsroute vs. Competitors

smsroute's $0.0520 per SMS rate to the UAE is 32% cheaper than Twilio's $0.0765 and competitive with or lower than all other major gateways. At scale (100,000 messages per month), this translates to $2,450 annual savings versus Twilio alone. Unlike traditional providers, we accept only cryptocurrency, eliminating payment processor markup and chargeback risk.

How to Send SMS to the UAE in 3 Steps

Step 1: Create a free smsroute account. Visit smsroute.cc, sign up with your email, and verify your inbox. No phone number, ID, or corporate registration is required at this stage. Your account is live and ready to accept cryptocurrency top-ups immediately.

Step 2: Top up your account with cryptocurrency. Send Bitcoin, USDT (TRC-20 preferred), Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, or Solana to the wallet address shown in your dashboard. Minimum top-up is $5 USD equivalent. Funds are credited within 2–3 blockchain confirmations (typically 5–30 minutes). We do not accept credit cards, SEPA transfers, or bank wires.

Step 3: Send SMS via the REST API. Call the smsroute API endpoint with the recipient's phone number in E.164 format (e.g., +971501234567), your message body, and your registered sender ID. Monitor delivery status via webhooks or the dashboard. For marketing SMS, ensure the recipient has opted in and the send time respects quiet hours (08:00–20:00 GST Sat–Thu, 10:00–20:00 GST Fri).

cURL Example

Python Example

curl -X POST https://api.smsroute.cc/send \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "to": "+971501234567",
    "message": "Your verification code is: 123456",
    "sender_id": "YourBrand"
  }'

import requests
import json

api_key = "YOUR_API_KEY"
url = "https://api.smsroute.cc/send"

payload = {
    "to": "+971501234567",
    "message": "Your verification code is: 123456",
    "sender_id": "YourBrand"
}

headers = {
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {api_key}",
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

response = requests.post(url, json=payload, headers=headers)
print(response.json())

import fetch from "node-fetch";

const apiKey = process.env.SMSROUTE_API_KEY;

const res = await fetch("https://api.smsroute.cc/messages", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${apiKey}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    to: "+9715551234567",
    from: "smsroute",
    text: "Your verification code is 384921",
  }),
});

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

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

$payload = json_encode([
    'to'   => '+9715551234567',
    'from' => 'smsroute',
    'text' => 'Your verification code is 384921',
], JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);

$ch = curl_init('https://api.smsroute.cc/messages');
curl_setopt_array($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);

package main

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

func main() {
    payload, _ := json.Marshal(map[string]string{
        "to":   "+9715551234567",
        "from": "smsroute",
        "text": "Your verification code is 384921",
    })

    req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST",
        "https://api.smsroute.cc/messages",
        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))
}