Send your first SMS in five minutes.

Create an SMSLocal account

Sign up with a work email. Every new account lands with ₹60 free credit — enough for ~200 test SMS. No credit card required. You will be asked for a company name and the country you operate in; for Indian operators, pick India.

Register your Principal Entity on DLT

India's TRAI-mandated DLT registry requires every sender to be approved before any SMS is delivered. If you haven't already registered, do it once on any DLT platform (Vi, Jio, Airtel, or BSNL) — approval is near-instant. Our team can help if you get stuck.

• Pick a 6-character Sender ID (also called the Header) — e.g. MYBRND or ALERTS.
• Register the template body of the SMS you want to send. Use {#var#} for dynamic fields.
• Copy the 19-digit Template ID after approval — you will pass it in every API call.

Add your DLT header in SMSLocal

In the dashboard, go to Settings → Sender IDs and paste the approved 6-character header. Approval typically syncs within a few hours. Once it shows status Active, you can send through it.

Generate an API key

Still in Settings, open API & Webhooks and click New API Key. Name it after the service that will use it (e.g. prod-otp-server) so you can rotate safely. Keys are 32-character hex strings — copy once and store in your secrets manager.

• Treat the key like a password. Never commit it to a repo.
• Use separate keys for dev, staging, and production.
• If a key is ever exposed, revoke and re-issue from the dashboard immediately.

Send your first SMS

You now have everything you need. Export the key as SMSLOCAL_KEY and run one of the snippets below. The API returns a plain-text message ID on success — store it so you can fetch the delivery status later.

curl "https://app.smslocal.in/api/smsapi" \
  --get \
  --data-urlencode "key=$SMSLOCAL_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "route=1" \
  --data-urlencode "sender=ALERTS" \
  --data-urlencode "number=9876543210" \
  --data-urlencode "sms=Hello from SMSLocal — your account is live." \
  --data-urlencode "templateid=1207161234567890123"

Check the delivery status

Pass the message ID to the /api/dlrapi endpoint to see per-number delivery status. For production volumes, switch to webhook mode so we push status updates to you as soon as the carrier confirms.

curl "https://app.smslocal.in/api/dlrapi" \
  --get \
  --data-urlencode "key=$SMSLOCAL_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "messageid=1987654321"