About The Five-Digit Desk

The name comes from the length of most short codes in the United States: five digits. The Five-Digit Desk is an independent site that answers questions about these numbers in plain terms. It is written for two kinds of reader. One is holding a phone with an unfamiliar text on it. The other runs a small business, a club or a nonprofit and wants to know whether a short code is worth paying for, and what the carriers will ask in return.

Dates

Each page is fixed to the date printed on it, so a price or a carrier policy reads as it stood then. Where something important changed after a page’s date, one later sentence records the change, added only after a primary source confirms it.

Limits

There is no database of codes behind these pages, and the site cannot say who sent a particular message beyond what its pages already print. It sends no texts, leases no codes and sells no messaging services. Where a fact rests on a source, the page cites it, usually CTIA, the Federal Communications Commission or the company that uses a code.

Pages go unsigned and free of advertising. They run no code in your browser and leave no cookie behind. Mistakes can be reported through the contact page.