Sending SMS to Israel: number formats, Hebrew encoding and sender IDs

tzah — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 10:42:56 +0000

If your app sends SMS worldwide, Israel has a few quirks that silently break validation, inflate costs or annoy users. This is a short checklist. The full guide is linked at the end.

1. Number format

Israeli mobile numbers have 10 digits locally and start with 05. For international systems, drop the leading 0 and add 972:

Format	Example
Local	`050-123-4567` / `0501234567`
E.164	`+972501234567`

Not every 05 number is Israeli mobile. The Israeli mobile prefixes are 050, 051, 052, 053, 054, 055, 058. 056 and 059 belong to Palestinian networks that share +972, and 057 is no longer in use. So avoid 05[0-9] and use an explicit list:

^(?:\+972|972|0)(?:50|51|52|53|54|55|58)\d{7}$

(Strip spaces and dashes first.) Israel also has number portability, so the prefix doesn't tell you the carrier.

2. Hebrew means UCS-2, and that changes the math

Encoding	Single SMS	Per segment when split
GSM-7 (Latin)	160	153
UCS-2 (Hebrew)	70	67

One Hebrew letter, emoji, curly quote or long dash switches the whole message to UCS-2. Budget by segments, not characters. Watch for invisible direction marks copied from word processors: they count as characters too.

The phone handles right-to-left display, so Hebrew mixed with English, numbers and links renders fine without adding direction marks.

3. Sender ID

Common options are a mobile number (recipients can reply), a landline number (they can call back, not text back), or an alphanumeric name in English letters and digits, up to 11 characters (no replies). If you need replies, use a mobile or virtual number. Check your provider's verification requirements before the first send.

4. Timing

Time zone: Asia/Jerusalem (UTC+2 / UTC+3 in summer). DST dates don't always match Europe or the US, so schedule by IANA zone.
Weekend: Friday–Saturday. Shabbat runs from Friday evening to Saturday night, and the business week is Sunday–Thursday.
Jewish holidays follow the Hebrew calendar, so their Gregorian dates move every year.

5. OTP messages

Put the code first (lock-screen preview), name the service, state the purpose and validity, and don't include a link:

[Service]: 458213 is your password reset code. Valid for 5 minutes. Didn't request it? Ignore this message.

6. Delivery reports

"Accepted" is not "delivered". Poll or subscribe to delivery reports (DLR), and treat "no final status within N seconds" as a failure so users can retry.

7. Marketing messages

Israeli law regulates advertising messages (prior consent, sender identification and an easy opt-out are among the requirements). Check with local counsel before automating marketing sends.

Full guide with more detail on sender IDs, DLR statuses and replies: SMS in Israel: A Developer's Guide

Disclosure: I'm the CEO of Global SMS, an Israeli SMS gateway.

DEV Community: tzah