SMS

Application-to-person (A2P) SMS across every major mobile network, from a single endpoint.

curl -X POST https://api.9bits.net/ng/v1/sendsms \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NINEBITS_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "from": "9bits",
    "to": ["2348020000000"],
    "content": "Your verification code is 481920.",
    "delivery_report": true
  }'

How it works

You POST a batch. We return a reference_id immediately and dispatch in the background. You learn the outcome by polling the status endpoint, or by letting us push receipts to your webhook.

Sending is asynchronous. A 200 means accepted and queued — never delivered. This is the thing to internalise before you build anything on top of it: there is no synchronous “sent” confirmation, because the operator hasn’t even seen the message yet when we reply to you.

What you get

Cost before you send

Every accepted batch returns a cost_estimate — total cost, per-operator breakdown, page count, and whether your balance covers it. No surprises on the invoice.

Safe retries

Idempotency-Key means a retry after a timeout can’t double-send or double-bill.

Real delivery receipts

Per-recipient status from the operator, not just “we accepted it” — polled or pushed to your webhook.

Structured errors

Machine-readable code on every failure, so your code can branch instead of string-matching prose.

The API in two calls


`POST /ng/v1/sendsms`	Queue a message for one or many recipients. Returns a `reference_id`.
`GET /ng/v1/sendsms/status/{reference_id}`	Ask what happened to that batch.

That’s the whole surface. Everything else — sender IDs, groups, contacts — is managed in the dashboard.

Start here

Send your first SMS The full request and response, field by field, in six languages.

Try it live Run the real endpoint against your account from the browser.

Delivery reports Track what actually reached the handset — and what didn't.

Encoding & pricing Why one emoji can double your bill.