Character Counter
Count characters, letters, and numbers in your text. Live progress bars show how close you are to the limit on 14 platforms including Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and SEO fields.
Total chars
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No spaces
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Letters
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Numbers
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Words
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Platform limits
How to use the character counter
Paste or type your text above. The stat cards update instantly. Scroll down in the tool panel to see platform limit bars — each bar shows your current count against the platform's limit, turning amber at 80% and red when you exceed it. Use the group filter tabs to focus on Social Media, SEO, or Messaging limits. The Customize panel lets you hide platforms you don't use.
How character counts are calculated
Total characters counts every character including spaces. Characters without spaces filters out all whitespace. Letters only counts a–z and A–Z; numbers only counts 0–9. All counts use Unicode-aware methods, so emoji and multi-byte characters are counted as a single character — matching how platforms like Twitter count them.
Why character limits matter
Every publishing platform enforces a character limit. Exceeding it means your text gets truncated or rejected. More importantly, writing to a tight limit forces clarity — Twitter's 280-character constraint has made short-form writing a discipline. For SEO, keeping your page title under 60 characters and meta description under 160 characters prevents Google from rewriting them in search results.
Frequently asked questions
Does Twitter count characters the same way as this tool?
Mostly. Twitter's limit is 280 characters, and it counts most Unicode characters as 1. The exception is URLs: Twitter wraps every URL in a t.co shortlink that always counts as 23 characters, regardless of the original URL length. This tool counts the raw characters you type, so subtract one URL slot (23 chars) for each link you plan to include in your tweet.
Does the meta description character limit include spaces?
Yes. The 160-character meta description limit counts spaces and punctuation. Search engines like Google actually measure pixel width rather than character count, and render around 920px on desktop — roughly 155–160 average-width characters. Keep your descriptions between 120 and 158 characters to be safe.
What is the LinkedIn post character limit?
LinkedIn allows up to 3,000 characters for a regular post. Posts are truncated in the feed at around 210 characters, with a 'see more' link — so your opening sentence should be compelling enough to earn that click. LinkedIn articles (long-form posts via the newsletter feature) have a separate limit of 110,000 characters.
Does an emoji count as one character?
It depends on the platform and the emoji. Most emoji are two UTF-16 code units, so JavaScript's .length method counts them as 2. This tool uses the correct Unicode code point count, so emoji count as 1 character each in the display. Twitter, Instagram, and most modern platforms also count emoji as 1–2 characters depending on the emoji — complex sequences like flags or skin-tone modifiers can count as more.
What is the SMS character limit?
A single SMS message is 160 characters using the GSM-7 character set (standard Latin letters and numbers). If you use any character outside GSM-7 — including most emoji, smart quotes, or accented letters beyond basic French/German — the message switches to Unicode (UCS-2) encoding and the limit drops to 70 characters per message segment. Long messages split into segments of 153 characters (GSM-7) or 67 characters (Unicode) to leave room for the multi-part header.
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