Country code +1

Sending SMS to Canada

Canada's CASL is among the strictest anti-spam laws anywhere, and unusually it carries a private right of action alongside regulatory penalties. Consent must be express or fall into a narrow implied category, and the burden of proving it sits with the sender.

At a glance

Canada by the numbers

The figures below come from public country data and set the context for how much SMS traffic Canada actually carries.

Canada country code

ISOCA / CAN

33,679,000

People

9,984,670

Area km²

1.825 Trillion

GDP (USD)

Sender ID

How your name appears in Canada

What shows up in the recipient’s inbox, and what has to be true before it can.

9:41

SMSLOCAL

Text Message

Your verification code is 4172. Valid for 10 minutes.

now

Delivered on +1

Sender ID rules for +1

Alphanumeric sender IDs are not supported. Traffic runs on long codes or short codes, with short codes requiring carrier approval.

Number format+1 (NPA) NXX-XXXX — shares the North American Numbering Plan with the US.

Delivers across every major network in Canada: Rogers, Bell, Telus, Freedom Mobile.

What people send most: Appointment reminders · Banking alerts · Retail promotions.

Message length: under the standard SMS encoding, a segment typically holds 160 GSM-7 characters, or 70 once a message uses Unicode — Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, emoji. Longer messages split into several segments automatically and are billed per segment; exact limits are confirmed for Canada as part of onboarding.

Before you send

What Canada requires

These are the constraints that decide whether a message is delivered, filtered or blocked — not general best practice.

Requirement 1 of 4: CASL requires express or defined implied consent, and the sender must be able to prove it.

Requirement 1 of 4

CASL requires express or defined implied consent, and the sender must be able to prove it.

Checked automatically on every message we send to Canada — nothing for you to track by hand.

Networks

Mobile operators in Canada

We deliver to every network below. Route quality is measured per operator, not averaged across the country.

4Networks

RogersLive route

BellLive route

TelusLive route

Freedom MobileLive route

Traffic

What businesses send in Canada

Appointment reminders

Cuts no-shows more effectively than email — most people notice a text within minutes of it arriving.

Banking alerts

Sent the instant the triggering event happens — trusted for anything time-sensitive tied to money.

Retail promotions

Needs clear consent and a working opt-out — the requirements above apply directly to this traffic.

Dialling

How to dial Canada

Every part of the number, laid out separately, then the same thing written the way an API expects it.

+Exit

1Country code

(NPA) NXX-XXXXNational number

+1 — +1 (NPA) NXX-XXXX — shares the North American Numbering Plan with the US.

From abroad, replace your exit code with +, then 1, then the national number — dropping the national trunk prefix if the country uses one (a leading 0 in most, though not in this numbering plan). Store numbers in E.164 (+1…) and they work from any country and any API.

Reference