Character Counter

About Character Counter

This free character counter counts the characters in your text as you type. It shows the total with spaces, the total without spaces, and the words, lines, sentences and paragraphs.

Below the numbers is the part most counters do not have: "Does it fit?" Each line is a real limit — an X post, a text message, a Google title — with a bar that turns orange near the limit and red when you go over, and the exact number of characters left.

Your text stays in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Why the X and SMS numbers are different

A simple counter just counts letters. Two of these limits do not work that way, so this tool counts them the way the service does.

X (Twitter) gives most posts 280 characters, but it weighs them:

• Letters, numbers and common punctuation count 1
• Emoji count 2
• Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters count 2 each
• Any link counts 23, whether it is short or long

So a post with a long link can show 150 characters in a normal counter and still fit easily on X.

SMS has two alphabets:

• If every character is in the basic GSM-7 set, one message holds 160 characters. A longer text is sent in parts of 153
• One character outside that set — an emoji, a curly quote ’, many accented letters — switches the whole message to Unicode: only 70 per message, 67 per part
• A few GSM characters, like € [ ] { } ~ ^ |, take the space of two

The SMS line shows which alphabet your text uses and how many messages it will be sent as.

The limits in the list

• X (Twitter) post — 280, weighted as above
• SMS text message — 160 (GSM-7) or 70 (Unicode) per message
• Page title (SEO) — about 60. Google cuts longer titles with "…"
• Meta description (SEO) — about 160. Longer ones are usually cut in search results
• YouTube title — 100
• Instagram caption — 2,200
• LinkedIn post — 3,000
• YouTube description — 5,000
• My limit — type any number, for a form, an essay or a school task

The SEO numbers are guides, not hard rules — Google measures titles in pixels, so a title of wide letters is cut sooner.

Characters, the way you see them

This counter counts what a person sees as one character. An emoji like 👍🏽 is one character here, even though it is stored as four pieces inside the computer. A letter with an accent is one character too.

The Bytes (UTF-8) number is the other view: how much space the text takes in a file or a database field. English letters take 1 byte, accented letters 2, most Asian characters 3, and emoji 4.

Features

• Characters with and without spaces, live as you type
• Words, lines, sentences, paragraphs and UTF-8 bytes
• X-accurate count, with emoji, Asian characters and links weighted
• SMS parts, GSM-7 or Unicode
• SEO title and meta description length
• Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn limits
• Your own limit
• Copy and clear buttons
• Private — the text never leaves your device

What people use it for

• Writing a post that must fit on X
• Checking a text message will go out as one SMS, not three
• Writing SEO titles and meta descriptions
• Filling in forms with a character limit — job applications, grant forms, app store text
• School and university tasks with a character count instead of a word count

How to use it

• Type or paste your text into the box
• Read the counts at the top — they update with every key
• Look at Does it fit? — green is fine, orange is close, red is over
• Set My limit for any other limit you need
• Press Copy text when you are done

Related tools

• Word Counter — words, characters and reading time
• Case Converter — change text to UPPER, lower or Title Case
• Remove Extra Spaces — clean up spaces before you count
• Fancy Text Generator — stylish letters for social posts