Twilio

Warnings

• breaking TwilioRestClient removed in v6.0.0. All pre-v6 tutorials and LLM-generated code using 'from twilio.rest import TwilioRestClient' fail with ImportError.
  Fix: from twilio.rest import Client (not TwilioRestClient). Client constructor is the same.
• breaking v9.0 (2024) was a full OpenAPI rewrite. ssml_emphasis() method on TwiML Say renamed to emphasis(). Code using say.ssml_emphasis() raises AttributeError.
  Fix: Replace .ssml_emphasis() with .emphasis() on TwiML Say objects.
• breaking v9.0: Chat API message.create() and similar methods now require body as a keyword argument, not positional. Positional args in these calls raise TypeError.
  Fix: Change client.chat.v2.services('IS...').channels('CH...').messages.create('body') to .messages.create(body='body')
• breaking twilio.rest.api.v2010.account.available_phone_number renamed to available_phone_number_country in v9.0. Code importing the old module path fails.
  Fix: Update any direct module path imports to use available_phone_number_country.
• gotcha The 'from' keyword is a Python reserved word. Twilio SMS create() uses from_= (with trailing underscore) as the parameter name. Passing from= causes SyntaxError.
  Fix: client.messages.create(to='+1...', from_='+1...', body='...')
• gotcha Client() with no arguments reads TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID and TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN from environment. If using API key auth instead, pass Client(api_key, api_secret, account_sid) — 3-argument form. Mixing up 2-arg and 3-arg forms causes authentication failures.
  Fix: Auth token: Client(account_sid, auth_token). API key: Client(api_key, api_secret, account_sid).

Install

• pip install twilio Python

Imports

• Client

  from twilio.rest import Client
  
  client = Client('ACXXXXXXXXX', 'auth_token')

  TwilioRestClient was removed in v6.0.0. ImportError on all current versions. Use Client.
• TwilioRestException

  from twilio.base.exceptions import TwilioRestException

  Exception class import path changed in v6. Old import path raises ImportError.
• VoiceResponse (TwiML)

  from twilio.twiml.voice_response import VoiceResponse
  resp = VoiceResponse()
  resp.say('Hello').emphasis('you')

  ssml_emphasis() was renamed to emphasis() in v9.0. Old method raises AttributeError.

Quickstart

Note from_= (with trailing underscore) — 'from' is a Python reserved word.

import os
from twilio.rest import Client
from twilio.base.exceptions import TwilioRestException

client = Client(
    os.environ['TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID'],
    os.environ['TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN']
)

# Send SMS
try:
    message = client.messages.create(
        to='+15558675309',
        from_='+15017250604',
        body='Hello from Python!'
    )
    print(message.sid)
except TwilioRestException as e:
    print(e)

# Generate TwiML
from twilio.twiml.voice_response import VoiceResponse
resp = VoiceResponse()
resp.say('Welcome to Twilio!')
print(str(resp))