Home/ Writing/ Character counter

Character counter

Count characters with and without spaces, lines, and words in any text. Useful for tweets, SMS, meta descriptions, and other length-limited fields.

Your text

Characters

No spaces

Words

Lines

Against common limits

What this tool does

This counter focuses on characters rather than words. It shows totals with and without spaces, plus how much room you have left in common length-limited fields: tweets, SMS, meta descriptions, title tags, and so on.

Why character limits matter

Most publishing platforms enforce a maximum length somewhere. Twitter caps a post at 280 characters. The classic SMS protocol packs a single message into 160 7-bit characters; anything longer gets split. Google's search-result snippet usually shows around 155 characters of your meta description and around 60 characters of your title. Knowing your count in real time lets you trim with confidence.

Spaces, line breaks, and Unicode

The "characters" count includes everything you've typed — letters, digits, punctuation, spaces, and line breaks. The "no spaces" count strips all whitespace characters. A line break is counted as one character even though it's represented internally as either \n (LF) or \r\n (CRLF) depending on platform; this tool normalizes to LF before counting.

Emoji and other characters outside the basic plane can be tricky. A character like 👨‍👩‍👧 is technically a sequence of several code points joined by zero-width joiners, and different platforms count it differently. This tool uses String.prototype.length, which counts UTF-16 code units — the same definition Twitter and most CMS systems use.

Common limits at a glance

Platform / field	Limit
Tweet (X / Twitter)	280 characters
SMS single message	160 characters
Meta description	~155 characters
Title tag	~60 characters
Email subject line	~70 characters
Instagram caption	2,200 characters
YouTube video title	100 characters
YouTube description	5,000 characters

When to use it

Anytime you're writing into a space-constrained slot. Copywriters use it for ad headlines, marketers for social posts, developers for commit messages, and students for assignments with strict character limits. The live "remaining" badges remove the guesswork.

Privacy

All counting happens in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to a server. See our privacy policy for the full statement.

Frequently asked questions

Does the counter include line breaks?

Yes — line breaks count as one character each. If you need to know the count without them, take the "no spaces" number, which excludes all whitespace including line breaks.

Why does an emoji sometimes count as more than one character?

Modern emoji are often sequences of multiple Unicode code points joined with zero-width joiners. A face-with-tears-of-joy is one code point, but a family emoji might be five. This tool counts UTF-16 code units, matching Twitter and most CMS systems.

What's the real Twitter character limit?

280 characters for most accounts. URLs are shortened to 23 characters regardless of their actual length. Twitter Blue subscribers have higher limits but the 280-character "free" count is what most posts target.

Does the tool know about my CMS's specific limit?

We list the most common ones. If your CMS has a different limit, just watch the "Characters" number and the per-limit badges become irrelevant.

Is my text uploaded anywhere?

No. All counting happens locally in your browser.