Character Counter
Count characters with and without spaces and check text against X, SMS and meta-description limits.
Results are provided as is, for general information. Check anything important before relying on it. See the Terms of Use.
About this tool
Live character count for any text, with and without spaces, plus a meter against common limits: an X (Twitter) post at 280, a single SMS at 160, a meta description at 155, a page title at 60, a YouTube title at 100, an Instagram caption at 2,200 and a LinkedIn post at 3,000. Characters are counted by Unicode code point, so an emoji counts as one. Pick the limit you are writing for and the tool shows how many characters are left, or how many you are over. Everything runs in your browser; the text is never sent anywhere.
When to use it
Questions
Does a space count as a character?
Yes. The main count includes spaces, tabs and line breaks, which is what almost every platform limit uses. The 'no spaces' figure is shown separately for the few places that ask for it.
Why does my platform show a different number?
Platforms apply their own rules. X counts every link as a fixed length and weights some scripts as two characters, and an SMS drops to 70 characters per segment as soon as it contains a non-GSM character such as an emoji. This tool counts plain Unicode code points, so use its limits as a close guide, not a guarantee.
How many characters should a meta description be?
Around 155 or fewer. Google truncates by pixel width, not a fixed count, so the real cut-off varies a little with the letters used, but staying near 155 keeps the whole sentence visible on most results.
How is an emoji counted?
As one character. The tool counts Unicode code points rather than the UTF-16 units some editors use, which count an emoji as two. Emoji built from several code points, such as a flag or a skin-tone variant, can count as more than one.