This character counter counts characters as you type or paste, with and without spaces, and shows how much room is left on X, Instagram, YouTube, in an SMS or in Google results. Next to the main character count it shows words, lines, UTF-8 bytes and SMS parts, and a Breakdown section splits the text into letters, digits, spaces, punctuation, emoji and line breaks.
How to use the character counter
- Type or paste your text into the box labelled "Type or paste text". Every figure updates as you type.
- Read the six counts under the box: Characters, Without spaces, Words, Lines, UTF-8 bytes and SMS parts.
- Check the Character Limits bars. Each one shows how many characters you have used and how many are left, and turns amber past 90% of its limit and red once the text is over.
- Type a number into Your own limit for any other target, such as a 500-character form field. The tool remembers it in your browser for next time.
- Use Remove extra spaces to tidy pasted text, Copy to copy it back out, or Clear to start again. Remove extra spaces collapses runs of spaces, trims each line and leaves at most one blank line between paragraphs.
How characters are counted
The counter counts characters the way they appear on screen. A thumbs-up with a skin tone is made of two Unicode code points, and the family emoji of a man, a woman and a girl is five joined together, yet each shows as one character and counts as one. An accented letter counts once whether it was typed as a single character or as a letter followed by an accent mark.
For example, ok followed by a space and a thumbs-up with a skin tone gives 4 characters, 3 without spaces and 11 UTF-8 bytes. The family emoji on its own is 1 character but 18 bytes. Hello world gives 11 characters, 10 without spaces and 11 bytes, because each plain English letter takes one byte. The byte figure matters when a database column or an API field is limited in bytes, since an emoji can take 4 bytes or more.
Character count with and without spaces
The main number is the character counter with spaces: spaces, line breaks and punctuation all count, which is how X, Instagram and most forms measure length. Without spaces leaves out spaces and line breaks, which some school and job application forms ask for instead.
The Breakdown section shows where the characters come from:
- Letters, from any alphabet, so it also works as a letter counter for names or puzzle answers.
- Digits, Spaces and Punctuation & symbols.
- Emoji and Line breaks.
- Sentences and Paragraphs, with paragraphs split at blank lines.
The limits it checks
- X post: 280, counted with X's own rules. Every link counts as 23 characters, and emoji and Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters count as 2.
- Google title about 60 and meta description about 155. Google shortens these by pixel width, so treat both numbers as guides. The guides on writing title tags and meta description length explain the pixel limits, and the SERP preview tool shows how a title and description look in a result.
- Instagram bio 150 and caption 2,200.
- YouTube title 100 and description 5,000.
- LinkedIn post 3,000 and Pinterest pin description 500.
SMS parts
One text message holds 160 characters when every character is in the GSM-7 alphabet, which covers English letters, digits and common punctuation. Longer messages are split into parts of 153 characters, because each part carries a small header. A single character outside that alphabet, such as an emoji or the rupee sign ₹, switches the whole message to Unicode, and the limits drop to 70 for one message and 67 per part. The symbols € [ ] { } ^ ~ | and \ belong to GSM-7 but take two places each.
So 160 letters fit in one SMS and 161 need two. Most carriers and bulk SMS services bill each part separately, which makes the count worth checking before a large send.
Limits to know
- Sites don't all count the same way. Some count an emoji as 2, so leave a little room when you are close to a limit.
- The X bar uses the standard 280-character limit. Paid X accounts can post longer text.
- Words are split with the browser's own word rules, so the word count can differ slightly from the word counter on text with hyphens or numbers. For longer pieces measured in words, that tool and the other writing tools are a better fit.
- Your text stays in the page. Only a custom limit, if you set one, is remembered in your browser for next time.
