Character Counter

A character counter is a tool that counts the number of characters in a block of text, typically alongside related metrics like word count, sentence count, and paragraph count. You paste text or type directly, and the numbers update as you write. Character counters are essential whenever you are writing against a limit enforced in characters: a tweet, an SMS, a meta description, an ad headline, or a social media caption.

A character is any single unit of text: a letter, a digit, a space, a punctuation mark, a symbol, a line break, or an emoji. In technical terms, "character" usually means a UTF-16 code unit, which is what most platforms enforce. Emoji count as 2 or more code units each. The distinction between characters (raw count) and visible characters (grapheme clusters, what a human sees) is explained in detail in the counting section above.

Yes. Every major platform limit (Twitter/X, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, SMS, and all SEO tools) is enforced on the character count including spaces. This tool shows both counts: characters with spaces (the number platforms enforce) and characters without spaces (used in some translation and academic workflows). Spaces typically account for 15 to 20 percent of English text.

Characters with spaces is the count including every space and line break. This is the number that social media platforms, SMS gateways, and SEO tools enforce. Characters without spaces removes all whitespace. This is used in translation agency pricing, some academic submissions, and typesetting workflows.

Yes, and they count as more than one character each. A simple emoji like a thumbs-up is 2 raw characters (2 UTF-16 code units). An emoji with a skin tone modifier is 4. A flag emoji is 4. A family emoji built with zero-width joiners is 11. On X/Twitter, every emoji counts as exactly 2 characters regardless of complexity (their weighted system). This tool shows both the raw count and the X-weighted count.

Since October 2018, X uses a weighted character counting system where every emoji counts as exactly 2 characters regardless of how many code points it uses, and CJK characters also count as 2. Before this change, a single family emoji could consume 11 of the 280 available characters. The weighted system is more equitable: complex emoji cost the same as simple ones. X normalizes text to NFC before counting, so precomposed characters always resolve to their compact form first.

A single SMS segment holds 160 characters in GSM-7 encoding (standard Latin character set). If the message contains any character outside GSM-7 (an emoji, a curly quote, a non-Latin script, or certain other characters), the network re-encodes it as UCS-2 and the segment limit drops to 70 characters. Long messages split into multiple segments: 153 characters per segment for GSM-7 and 67 per segment for UCS-2, because 7-byte headers take up the difference. Each segment is billed as a separate message.

One emoji forces the entire message into UCS-2 Unicode encoding, which cuts the per-segment limit from 160 characters to 70. A 160-character plain-text message is one segment. The same message with one emoji becomes three segments (each up to 67 characters), and each segment is billed separately. The same problem occurs with curly quotes (from Word), the euro sign, and nine GSM-7 extension characters that take 2 character slots each.

Your message contains at least one character outside the GSM-7 standard character set. The most common culprits: any emoji, curly or "smart" quotation marks (automatically inserted by Word and most word processors), the euro sign placed in certain contexts, or an accented character that falls outside the GSM-7 alphabet. The SMS Segment Analyzer in this tool highlights the exact characters triggering UCS-2 encoding, and the Convert to GSM-7 Safe button fixes the fixable ones in one click.

Ten characters sit in the GSM-7 extension table: the nine visible ones { } [ ] \ | ~ ^ and the euro sign, plus the rarely used form-feed control character. Each takes 2 character slots in a message (the escape character plus the character itself), not 1. A message containing three euro signs uses 6 character slots for those three characters, not 3. Most character counters do not detect this. This tool's SMS Segment Analyzer counts extension characters at their true 2-slot cost, matching the behavior defined in 3GPP TS 23.038, the specification every GSM carrier follows.

Free posts are limited to 280 weighted characters, where emoji and CJK characters count as 2 each and URLs always count as 23 (via the t.co shortener). X Premium subscribers can post up to 25,000 characters, with the first 280 shown before the expand button. X bios are limited to 160 characters, usernames to 15, display names to 50, and direct messages to 10,000.

All URLs are automatically shortened through X's t.co link shortener and counted as exactly 23 characters, regardless of the original URL length. A 200-character URL counts as 23. A 12-character URL counts as 23. This is a fixed rule in the twitter-text library, the open-source counter X publishes. A character counter that measures the raw character length of a URL in a tweet will give you an incorrect weighted count — the X-count on this page applies the 23-character rule automatically.

Instagram captions allow up to 2,200 characters, but only the first 125 characters are visible in the feed before the caption is truncated with a "more" button. The strategic character limit for the visible hook of any Instagram caption is 125 characters, not 2,200. Instagram bios are limited to 150 characters and usernames to 30.

LinkedIn posts allow up to 3,000 characters, with roughly the first 210 characters visible on desktop (about 140 on mobile) before the "see more" fold. The post limit was doubled from 1,300 to 3,000 in June 2023. The About section allows 2,600 characters, headlines 220, comments 1,250, and position descriptions 2,000. Connection request notes are limited to 200 characters for free accounts and 300 for Premium and Sales Navigator.

TikTok captions allow up to 4,000 characters. The limit was raised from 2,200 in 2023. Only the first 100 characters or so — the opening line or two — are visible in the feed before the caption is truncated. TikTok bios are limited to 80 characters. Many third-party tools and published guides still show the old 2,200 figure.

The safe planning figure is 150 to 155 characters. Google displays roughly 150 to 160 characters on most devices in 2026 (its snippet box is about 920 pixels wide, which averages 158 characters), though this varies by screen width and keyword bolding. Put the most important information in the first 100 characters because mobile snippets truncate earliest. Google rewrites a significant share of meta descriptions regardless of length, so write them to earn the click rather than to summarize the page.

The most common reasons: different counting units (code units vs grapheme clusters), different handling of emoji (some count by code points, some by code units, some by grapheme clusters), and text normalization (whether NFC or NFD form is used). A precomposed accent character and its decomposed equivalent look identical but have different code unit counts. A counter that does not state which unit it uses is the source of most disagreements.

A grapheme cluster is a unit of text that a human reader perceives as one character, defined in Unicode Standard Annex 29. A family emoji looks like one character to a reader but is 11 code units and 7 code points internally. Grapheme cluster counting is the "visible characters" metric in this tool. It is the right number to use when you are asking how long something looks, not how many characters a platform will enforce.

About 600 characters including spaces, based on the planning figure of 6 characters per word (average English word length of 4.7 letters plus a trailing space). Conversational text runs closer to 500 characters per 100 words; technical writing runs closer to 700. Paste your actual text for the exact figure.

The average typist produces about 40 words per minute, which is roughly 200 characters per minute using the 5-characters-per-word convention. Proficient typists reach 80 WPM (about 400 characters per minute). Professional transcriptionists typically sustain 300 to 400 characters per minute. The fastest certified typist on record peaked at approximately 212 WPM.

Yes. Every punctuation mark, digit, space, and symbol counts as a character on every major platform. This tool shows the full composition of your text: the exact count of letters, digits, punctuation marks, spaces, and emoji, which helps you identify what to trim when you need to fit within a limit.

A character counter counts every individual character including spaces, punctuation, and emoji. A word counter groups consecutive non-space characters into words. Social media platforms, SMS gateways, and ad platforms enforce character limits. Academic institutions and editorial style guides typically enforce word limits. This tool shows both simultaneously.

No. All counting runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your text is never uploaded, transmitted, stored, or logged anywhere. Closing the tab removes it completely. You can verify this yourself by opening your browser developer tools (F12), going to the Network tab, and typing into the counter. You will see zero outbound requests containing your text.

Open the Tools menu and select Word count. The dialog shows both characters with spaces and without spaces. This is not a live counter; you need to reopen the dialog to see an updated count after editing. Use Ctrl+Shift+C (Windows) or Command+Shift+C (Mac) to open Word count directly.

Go to the Review tab in the ribbon and click Word Count. The dialog shows characters with and without spaces. The status bar at the bottom of the document window shows a live word count but not a live character count. For a live character count as you type, paste your text here and keep the tool open alongside your document.

Yes. This tool supports all Unicode text including CJK scripts, Arabic, Cyrillic, Thai, and all other languages. For CJK text on X/Twitter, each character counts as 2 under the weighted system (capping a post at 140 CJK characters). For SMS, CJK text forces UCS-2 encoding and reduces the per-segment limit from 160 to 70 characters.

Use the Invisible Character Detector built into this tool. It live-detects the hidden Unicode that ordinary counters never show: zero-width spaces (U+200B), zero-width non-joiners and joiners, byte-order marks (U+FEFF), non-breaking spaces (U+00A0), narrow no-break spaces, soft hyphens (U+00AD), word joiners (U+2060), left-to-right and right-to-left marks, bidi embedding and override controls, and stray C0/C1 control characters. These characters sneak into text copied from websites, PDFs, and Word documents, and they are a classic cause of failed string comparisons, corrupted CSV imports, and database mismatches. Bidi override characters are also a documented security risk — the Trojan Source technique (CVE-2021-42574) used them to disguise malicious code. The Strip Hidden Characters button removes the safe-to-delete ones in one click; zero-width joiners inside emoji and zero-width non-joiners used for Arabic, Persian, and Indic script shaping are deliberately preserved.

The UTF-8 bytes card in the composition grid shows this live. UTF-8 encodes characters with a variable width: ASCII letters, digits, and basic punctuation take 1 byte each; accented Latin characters like é take 2; most currency and math symbols like € take 3; and emoji take 4 bytes each. This matters because databases, APIs, and file systems measure limits in bytes, not characters — a VARCHAR field, an API payload cap, or a UTF-8 column index all consume bytes, and a text that is 500 characters can easily be 900 or more bytes. Multiply the byte figure by your per-byte costs when sizing storage or payloads.