Character Counter
Live character count with and without spaces — perfect for social media limits.
This character counter shows exactly how many characters your text contains, updated live as you type. You get the count with spaces and without spaces, so whichever limit you are working against, you can see precisely where you stand.
Character limits are everywhere: a post on X (formerly Twitter) allows 280 characters, an Instagram bio allows 150, and a single SMS message holds 160. Meta titles and descriptions, YouTube titles, ad headlines and form fields all enforce their own caps. Paste your draft here and trim it until it fits.
The tool runs entirely in your browser, so drafts of tweets, bios or ad copy are never sent to a server.
How to count characters
- Type or paste your text into the box.
- Read the live character count, shown with and without spaces.
- Compare it against your target limit, such as 280 for X or 160 for SMS.
- Edit your text and watch the count fall until it fits.
- Copy the final version straight into your platform of choice.
Common character limits to know
X/Twitter posts: 280 characters. Instagram bio: 150. Instagram captions: 2,200. TikTok bio: 80. SMS: 160 per message segment. Google search result titles are typically truncated around 60 characters, and meta descriptions around 155 to 160. LinkedIn headlines allow 220.
Watch out for emoji and special symbols: many platforms count an emoji as two or more characters because of how Unicode encodes them, and one SMS segment drops from 160 to 70 characters if your message contains any non-GSM character such as an emoji or certain accented letters.
How the character counter works
As you type or paste, the tool measures the length of your text and shows two figures: the total including spaces, and the total after spaces are removed. Both update live on every keystroke, so you can watch the number climb toward a limit and stop exactly where you need to. The counting is pure JavaScript running on the page, with no server involved.
The with-spaces figure is the one almost every platform enforces, since spaces are real characters that take up room in a tweet, a bio or an SMS. The without-spaces figure is useful for word-processing style checks and for estimating how much actual content, rather than whitespace, your text contains.
Your text stays on your device
Drafts of posts, bios, ad copy, headlines and messages are counted entirely in your browser. Nothing you paste is transmitted, saved or seen by anyone else, so you can polish an unpublished announcement or a private message without it leaving your screen.
This local-only approach also means the character counter keeps working with no internet connection once the page has loaded. There is no account, no history and no tracking of what you paste; when you close the tab, the text is gone.
Where character limits bite
Social media is the obvious battleground: fitting a headline into a tweet, a tagline into an Instagram or TikTok bio, or a hook into the first line of a post before it gets truncated. But limits are everywhere else too, from database fields that silently cut off long entries to SMS marketing where every extra segment costs money.
SEO is a common reason people count characters. Search engines truncate page titles and meta descriptions that run too long, so writers trim them to display cleanly in results. Form fields, product names, file names and password rules all impose caps, and checking the count first saves a rejected submission later.
Tips for trimming to fit
When you are a few characters over, look first at links, hashtags and emoji, which eat space faster than they add value. Swapping a long word for a shorter synonym, cutting a redundant adjective or dropping a trailing hashtag is usually enough to slip under the cap without hurting the message.
For SMS specifically, avoid a single stray emoji or curly quote if you can, because one non-standard character can flip the whole message from 160-character segments to 70-character ones and double your send count. Paste the final wording here and confirm it fits before you send to a large list.
How characters are counted, and the edge cases
The counter measures the characters actually present in your text, including spaces, punctuation, line breaks and symbols. This is a faithful count of what you pasted, but it will not always match a specific platform's own tally, because platforms apply their own quirks, such as counting every link as a fixed 23 characters on X regardless of its real length.
Emoji and complex scripts are the trickiest area. A single emoji you see on screen can be made of several underlying code units, and combined emoji such as flags or skin-tone variants use more still. Accented letters and non-Latin alphabets are counted correctly here, but remember that any non-basic character can change how SMS gateways segment your message.
Common mistakes and related tools
The most frequent error is counting text that carries hidden double spaces, tabs or non-breaking spaces pasted from a web page, which inflates the with-spaces total. If your count looks higher than expected, the culprit is usually invisible whitespace rather than your words. Clean it first and the number will settle.
Run messy text through Remove Extra Spaces to strip stray whitespace before counting, or Remove Line Breaks if a paste from a PDF has scattered your text across many short lines. When you care about words rather than characters, for example an essay limit, switch to the Word Counter, which reports words, sentences and reading time.
Frequently asked questions
Does the count include spaces?
Both numbers are shown: characters with spaces and characters without. Most platform limits, including X and SMS, count spaces, so use the with-spaces figure unless told otherwise.
Is this character counter free and private?
Yes. It is free with no sign-up, and your text is processed entirely in your browser. Nothing you type or paste is uploaded anywhere.
How are emoji counted?
The tool counts what your text actually contains in Unicode terms. Note that platforms differ: X counts most emoji as two characters, and a single emoji in an SMS switches the whole message to 70-character segments.
What is the character limit on X (Twitter)?
Standard posts are limited to 280 characters. Links are counted as 23 characters regardless of their real length. Paste your draft here to check it fits before posting.
How long can an Instagram bio be?
An Instagram bio is capped at 150 characters. That is short, so count first, then cut filler words until the essentials fit.
Why does my SMS get split into two messages?
One SMS segment holds 160 characters using the basic GSM alphabet. Go over that, or include an emoji, and your phone silently splits the text into multiple segments, which some carriers bill separately.
Does it work on iPhone and Android?
Yes. The counter works in any mobile browser, so you can check a caption or bio length on your phone before you paste it into the app.