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Character Counter

Count characters, words, and sentences. Track platform limits in real time.

Platform selection
X / Twitter0 / 280

280 characters remaining

0Characters
0Words
0Lines
0Sentences

How the Character Counter Works

Paste or type your text into the box above. The counter updates instantly, showing character count, character count without spaces, word count, sentence count, and paragraph count.

The platform limits section shows how your text fits within the character limits of major social media platforms. The progress bar turns red when you reach 90% of a limit, giving you a clear visual warning before you hit the cap.

Social Media Character Limits

Each platform has its own limit. Here's a quick cheat sheet:

  • X / Twitter: 280 characters. The tightest limit — every word counts. Threads let you chain posts for longer content.
  • Instagram: 2,200 characters for captions. Only the first ~125 characters show before "more" — front-load your key message.
  • LinkedIn: 3,000 characters for posts. Longer content tends to perform well on LinkedIn — use it to share insights.
  • TikTok: 2,200 characters for captions. Similar to Instagram, keep your hook short and visible before the truncation.
  • Facebook: 63,206 characters. Practically unlimited for most purposes — no need to worry about this one.

11 Platform Presets, One Progress Bar

Pick a platform from the preset row — Twitter/X (280), X Premium (4000), SMS single (160), SMS multi (153 per part), Meta description (160), Meta title (60), Bluesky (300), LinkedIn post (3000), Instagram caption (2200), Facebook post (63206), or Custom, and the limit snaps in instantly. The progress bar turns yellow past 75% and red past 100%, with a live caption showing how many characters you have left or how far over you've gone.

Sentences and paragraph counts are still there. What isn't: a saved draft or history, the counter is intentionally stateless so nothing you type is ever stored anywhere.

Platform Character Limits at a Glance

Beyond social media, character limits matter for SEO, SMS marketing, and email campaigns. Here are the numbers that shape everyday writing:

  • X (Twitter): 280 characters per post; 4,000 characters for X Premium (Blue) subscribers.
  • LinkedIn: 3,000 characters for posts; 150 characters for article headlines; 300 characters for connection request messages.
  • SMS: 160 characters per segment (GSM-7 basic Latin alphabet). Messages with emoji or accented characters use Unicode encoding, capped at 70 characters per segment. Carriers stitch multi-part messages together automatically, but each segment costs separately.
  • Meta title tag (SEO): 50–60 characters recommended — Google truncates titles at approximately 580 px display width, which corresponds to roughly 60 characters in a typical font.
  • Meta description (SEO): 150–160 characters. Google may rewrite or truncate longer descriptions in search results, so front-load the key information.
  • Email subject line: 40–60 characters is the sweet spot for open rates (Mailchimp data). Most mobile email clients display 30–40 characters in the preview pane.
  • YouTube: 100 characters for video titles (search results show roughly 70); up to 5,000 characters for descriptions.

Related tools: Word Counter, Reading Time Calculator, and Speech Time Calculator.

Characters vs. Words vs. Bytes

These three measures sound similar but behave very differently depending on the platform or API you're writing for.

  • Characters include everything visible — spaces, punctuation, and all glyphs. A character count is not the same as a word count. A word counter splits on whitespace; a character counter counts every code point.
  • A character ≠ a byte in Unicode. Most basic Latin characters (a–z, 0–9) take 1 byte in UTF-8. Accented characters (é, ñ, ü) take 2 bytes. Emoji take 4 bytes. SMS gateways and some APIs count bytes, not characters, so a single emoji can consume the equivalent of 4 plain characters.
  • Twitter counts some Unicode characters as 2 units. CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) characters and certain emoji count as 2 toward the 280-character limit, even though they are a single code point.
  • Word count ≈ characters ÷ 5 for English text (average English word is about 4.7 characters including the trailing space). This approximation breaks down for CJK languages, where a single character can represent a full word or concept.
  • NLP tokenization vs. whitespace splitting. Simple word counters split on spaces. NLP tokenizers handle contractions ("don't" = 2 tokens), hyphenated words ("well-being" = 1 or 2 depending on the model), and punctuation attached to words. This tool uses whitespace splitting — fast and consistent, the same method platforms use.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do spaces count toward the character limit?
Yes, the main character count includes all spaces. The 'No spaces' stat shows the count with whitespace stripped. Platforms like X/Twitter count spaces as characters, so the main count is what matters for platform limits.
Does a space count as a character?
Yes. Spaces, tabs, and line breaks are all characters in Unicode. X/Twitter counts spaces. Meta description limits count spaces. Only some platforms — like Instagram's hashtag counter — exclude spaces from specific sub-counts.
How are sentences counted?
Sentences are counted by detecting punctuation marks — periods, exclamation points, and question marks. A single block of text with no punctuation counts as one sentence. This is a heuristic, not a perfect grammar parser, so results may vary for creative or informal writing.
Does this tool store what I type?
No. Everything stays in your browser — nothing is sent to any server. Your text is processed entirely client-side and disappears the moment you close the tab.
Why does my SMS split into multiple messages?
A standard SMS segment is 160 GSM-7 characters (basic Latin alphabet). Once you include emoji, accented characters, or non-Latin scripts, the message switches to Unicode encoding, dropping the per-segment limit to 70 characters. When you exceed the single-segment limit, carriers split the message into 153-character segments (GSM-7) or 67-character segments (Unicode), the remaining characters are reserved for multi-part reassembly headers.

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By Bam's Thinkery — Updated