Two SMS providers, compared on price, features and ratings, so you can pick fast.
Updated October 2026
THE VERDICT
Africa's Talking wins on price and developer experience. Azure SMS wins on channel coverage and compliance.
Africa's Talking and Azure SMS take different pricing approaches. Pick based on volume and team, and the scorecard below breaks down where each one leads.
Winner cells are tinted, green where Africa's Talking leads, violet where Azure SMS does.
FAQ
Yes. Many teams route different message types through different providers or fail over between them. Courier lets you send through both behind a single API and switch providers without changing your code.
Pricing is usage-based and varies by destination country. In Kenya, SMS costs roughly $0.003 to $0.005 per message (about KES 0.40 to 0.60), other African destinations range from about $0.001 to $0.05, and US outbound messages are around $0.03 each. There is no monthly platform fee.
Official SMS SDKs are published for C#/.NET (via NuGet), JavaScript/Node.js (via npm), Python (via PyPI), and Java (via Maven), all wrapping the same versioned SMS REST API. Microsoft's supportability policy guarantees at least three years' notice before a documented REST API interface changes, and at least one year before an SDK's underlying assembly needs a minor-version update.
Why not both?
Use both behind one API.
Route Africa's Talking, Azure SMS, or both, and switch providers without changing your code. Courier sits in front of every channel.
Pricing, plans and feature availability as of October 2026 and may change. Ratings are aggregated from public review platforms.