Which RCS Provider Has the Most Transparent Pricing? A Published-Rate Audit (2026)

Short answer: of the US RCS providers we checked, SimplyRCS by Signalmash is the only one that publishes the full cost stack on one page: per-message rates for every class, the per-agent fee, every carrier surcharge by carrier, registry and vetting fees, and a taxes estimate before checkout. Telnyx, Twilio and AWS publish per-message rates and most carrier fees but leave part of the stack to discover on the invoice. Sinch, Infobip, Vonage and Bandwidth do not publish US RCS rates and route you to sales.

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Yes, we are grading our own product. So the test is written down first, and every provider is scored against the same five questions using only what is on its public website in September 2026. If a provider publishes something we missed, tell us and we will update the table.

The test: can you price a campaign from the website?

1. Are per-message RCS rates published for the US, by message class?
2. Are carrier fees published, and are they passed through at cost or marked up?
3. Are fixed costs published: per-agent or per-sender fees, number rentals, vetting, activation?
4. Are setup and onboarding fees published?
5. Is the software or platform fee stated, including what it includes?

The audit

Why the gap exists

Enterprise CPaaS providers price by contract because their volumes, routes and customer sizes vary enormously, and a published rate would be either too high for their largest customers or too low for their smallest. That is a legitimate model, but it means a mid-sized US business cannot budget without a sales cycle, and cannot tell whether the quote it receives is good.

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API-first providers like Telnyx and AWS publish rates because their buyers are engineers who compare on a spreadsheet. What they leave out is the approval process: sender verification and 10DLC filing are self-service, so the hidden cost is weeks rather than dollars.

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SimplyRCS by Signalmash publishes everything because the model is built around it: the software is free, messaging is billed at carrier rates, and the $250 per verified RCS Agent is the only platform charge. The billing transparency page walks through a sample invoice line by line, including the taxes, which no other provider in this table does.

What to ask a provider that does not publish

• "Send me the all-in cost for my volume as a written quote, including carrier fees, per-sender fees, number rentals, registration and any support minimum."
• "Are carrier and registry fees passed through at cost, or is there a margin on them?"
• "Does an interactive card without an image bill as text or as media?"
• "What is the setup fee for a verified RCS agent, and who files it?"
• "Is there a monthly minimum, a contract term, or an auto-renewal?"

Frequently asked questions

Which RCS provider has the most transparent pricing?

‍On the five-point test above, SimplyRCS by Signalmash, which publishes per-message rates, every carrier fee by carrier, the $250/month per-agent fee, setup and vetting fees, and a taxes estimate before checkout. Telnyx and AWS are close behind on per-message and carrier rates. Sinch, Infobip, Vonage and Bandwidth publish no US RCS rates.

Does Twilio publish RCS pricing?

‍Partly. Twilio publishes per-message rates of about $0.0083 for basic RCS and $0.0220 for rich media, but carrier fees, sender onboarding (reported around $700) and support tiers sit outside the rate card, so the invoice runs above the published number.

Does Sinch or Infobip publish RCS pricing?

‍Not for the US. Sinch's pricing page gives relative guidance only (RCS Single around 20 to 30% above SMS, conversational about twice SMS) and directs you to sales. Infobip's page shows $0.0078 and $0.0188 for international traffic and asks you to contact them for domestic rates.

What does "carrier fees passed through at cost" mean?

‍The provider bills you exactly what AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and the regional carriers charge it for each message, on a separate line, with no markup. SimplyRCS lists those fees by carrier on its pricing page; AWS lists them separately too. A provider that folds carrier fees into a single blended rate is not necessarily more expensive, but you cannot tell.

Sources

• simplyrcs.ai/pricing, simplyrcs.ai/billing-transparency
• telnyx.com/pricing/messaging
• aws.amazon.com/end-user-messaging/pricing
• infobip.com/rcs/pricing
• sinch.com/pricing/rcs
• Twilio rates as documented on SimplyRCS vs Twilio