How to use the character counter
Type or paste text into the box. The total character count appears in large type, with a breakdown underneath: characters without spaces, letters, numbers, spaces, line breaks, punctuation and symbols, words, and the size of the text in bytes.
To check your text against a limit, click one of the preset buttons or type any number into Character limit. A bar fills up as you type and shows how many characters you have left. When you go over, it turns red and tells you by how many characters, so you know exactly how much to cut.
Common character limits
| Where | Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| X (Twitter) post | 280 | Links always count as 23 characters, and most emoji count as 2. |
| Title tag | About 60 | Google cuts titles by pixel width, roughly 600 px, not a fixed count. |
| Meta description | About 155 to 160 | Longer descriptions are usually shortened with an ellipsis in results. |
| SMS text message | 160 | Only 70 when the message contains Urdu, Arabic, emoji or other non-Latin characters. |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 | Only the first line or two show before "more". |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 | Around the first 200 characters show before "see more". |
| Google Ads headline | 30 | Descriptions allow 90 characters. |
Platforms change their limits from time to time, and some count characters in their own way, so treat these as guides and check the platform's help page for anything critical.
How characters are counted
This counter counts characters the way a person sees them. An emoji such as a thumbs-up with a skin tone, or a letter with an accent, counts as one character, even though computers may store it as two or more code points. Spaces and line breaks are included in the main count. Without spaces removes every kind of whitespace, including tabs and line breaks.
The size in bytes uses UTF-8, the encoding used by almost every website and database. Plain English letters take one byte each, accented Latin letters take two, most Urdu, Arabic and Hindi letters take two or three, and emoji take four. Byte size matters when a database column, form field or API limits text by bytes rather than characters.
Why SMS limits drop to 70 characters
A standard text message holds 160 characters from a basic Latin character set called GSM-7. As soon as a message includes a character outside that set, such as an Urdu letter, a curly quote or an emoji, the whole message switches to a different encoding and the limit falls to 70. Longer messages are split into parts, and each part costs the same as a full message with most providers. If you send bulk SMS, replacing curly quotes with straight ones using the Text Cleaner can keep messages within the cheaper limit.
Frequently asked questions
Does the character count include spaces?
The main number includes spaces and line breaks. The Without spaces row shows the count with all whitespace removed.
Why does X say my post is longer than this counter?
X uses weighted counting: every link counts as 23 characters no matter its length, and most emoji and characters from scripts like Chinese or Japanese count as 2. Plain text in English will match.
How many characters should a meta description have?
Aim for about 150 to 160 characters. Google doesn't have a strict character limit, but longer descriptions are usually cut off on desktop and mobile results.
Is an emoji one character or two?
Here, an emoji counts as one character, because that is what a reader sees. Some platforms and programming languages count it as two or more because of how it is stored.
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