What an SMS OTP costs in India, and what DLT asks of you
SMS OTP prices in India per message, what DLT registration involves for OTP templates, whether you can send OTP without DLT, and the cheaper options.
An SMS OTP in India costs about Rs 0.10 to Rs 0.45 per message in 2026, plus 18% GST. Before you can send the first one, you also need DLT registration. Here is what each provider charges, what DLT involves, and when you can skip SMS entirely.
Price per SMS OTP
| Provider | Price per OTP SMS |
|---|---|
| MSG91 | About Rs 0.15 at base rates, about Rs 0.13 at high volume |
| Gupshup | About Rs 0.17 |
| Kaleyra | About Rs 0.18 |
| Twilio (India) | About Rs 0.45 |
Prices are before 18% GST and move with volume. The real cost per successful login is higher than the price per message: users who do not get the code tap Resend, and each resend is billed.
What it adds up to
| Logins a month | At Rs 0.15 | With 20% resends |
|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | Rs 1,500 | Rs 1,800 |
| 1 lakh | Rs 15,000 | Rs 18,000 |
| 10 lakh | Rs 1,50,000 | Rs 1,80,000 |
What DLT asks of you
TRAI’s Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (TCCCPR) 2018 put all commercial SMS in India on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platforms run by the operators. For OTP you register:
- Your business as a Principal Entity, with company documents.
- A header, the sender id users see, such as
KIRANA. - Each message template, with variables for the code, for example
Your Kirana Express code is {#var#}. It expires in 10 minutes.
Your SMS provider attaches the registered ids to every message. A message that does not match a registered template is blocked by the network. Plan for registration and template approval to take days, not minutes.
Can you send OTP without DLT?
Not by SMS through legitimate routes. Messages to Indian numbers from unregistered senders or templates are filtered by the operators, and offers of “OTP without DLT” usually mean international routes that deliver poorly and break the rules.
You can, however, verify users without SMS, and none of these need DLT:
| Method | Cost each | Needs DLT |
|---|---|---|
| Email OTP | Rs 0.03 on SignOps | No |
| WhatsApp authentication message | About Rs 0.115 plus GST (Meta’s rate) | No, but needs WhatsApp Business approval |
| Push approval on a trusted phone | Rs 0.30 on SignOps, about Rs 4.40 on Twilio | No |
| Passkey | Rs 0 on SignOps | No |
A sensible mix
Most apps need SMS once per user: to prove a phone number at signup. After that, logins can move to cheaper or safer methods. Email codes cost a fifth of an SMS. Push approvals cost more than an SMS but cannot be read out to a caller or caught by a SIM swap. Passkeys cost nothing per sign-in.
See OTP service providers in India for a side-by-side, and email OTP vs SMS OTP for when each fits.
Sources: Message Central: SMS OTP pricing in India, Message Central: India SMS guidelines and DLT, WhatsApp Business API pricing in India.