Aa Character Counter
Count characters with and without spaces, words, lines and bytes as you type โ and see at a glance whether your post fits X, a meta description, an SMS or an Instagram caption.
How we count ยท Characters count what you see: an emoji such as ๐๐ฝ or a flag is one character. Line breaks are not counted in "Characters", but they are counted in the platform limits below, because X, Instagram and SMS count them. The X (Twitter) count uses X's weighting: most Latin letters count 1, CJK characters and emoji count 2, and every link counts 23. EUC-KR counts Korean/CJK as 2 bytes; NEIS (Korea's school-record system) counts Korean as 3 bytes and a line break as 2.
How to use the character counter
- Type or paste your text into the box. All eight numbers at the top update instantly as you type.
- Click any number (characters, words, bytesโฆ) to copy it to your clipboard.
- Set a ๐ฏ Target โ for example 280 for a post on X, or 650 words for a college essay โ and pick the unit. The bar and the "left / over" message track your progress.
- Check the character limits table to see how your text measures up against X, Google title tags, meta descriptions, SMS, YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn.
- clean spaces collapses repeated spaces and tabs, trims each line and squeezes multiple blank lines into one. Your draft is kept in this browser so it survives a refresh; clear deletes it.
What counts as a character?
- Characters โ every letter, digit, space and punctuation mark, excluding line breaks. Emoji and flags made of several Unicode code points (๐๐ฝ, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐จโ๐ฉโ๐ง) count as one character, exactly as you see them.
- Characters (no spaces) โ the same count with spaces, tabs and line breaks removed. Some essay portals and translation quotes use this number.
- Words โ groups of characters separated by whitespace, the same rule Microsoft Word and Google Docs use. "Don't stop" is two words.
- Lines โ the number of lines, counting empty lines too.
Character limits cheat sheet (2026)
| Where | Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| X (Twitter) post | 280 | Weighted: CJK and emoji count 2, links always 23. Premium accounts can post longer. |
| Google title tag | ~50โ60 | Google truncates by pixel width (about 600 px), not by an exact count. |
| Meta description | ~150โ160 | Longer snippets are cut with "โฆ" on desktop; mobile shows a little more. |
| SMS text | 160 / 70 | 160 with the plain GSM-7 alphabet, only 70 if the message contains emoji or other Unicode. Long texts split into 153- or 67-character parts. |
| YouTube title | 100 | About 60โ70 characters are visible in search results. |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 | Only the first ~125 characters show before "more". |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 | About 210 characters show before "see more". |
For SEO, aim for a title of roughly 50โ60 characters with your main keyword near the front, and a meta description of 120โ155 characters that reads like an ad for the page. Writing a little under the limit is safer than writing right up to it.
Bytes: UTF-8, EUC-KR and NEIS
Databases, APIs and old forms often limit text by bytes, not characters. In UTF-8 (the encoding of the web) an English letter is 1 byte, an accented letter like รฉ is 2, a Korean, Chinese or Japanese character is 3, and most emoji are 4. That's why a 255-byte database column can hold 255 English letters but only 85 Korean characters.
| Character | UTF-8 | EUC-KR | NEIS |
|---|---|---|---|
| English letter, digit, space | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Accented letter (รฉ, รฑ) | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| Korean / CJK character | 3 | 2 | 3 |
| Line break (Enter) | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Emoji | 4 | 2 (approx.) | 3 |
EUC-KR is the legacy Korean encoding still used by some older Korean websites and job-application portals, and NEIS is the system Korean schools use for student records. If you write Korean text for those systems, set the target unit to the matching byte count.
Your text never leaves your device โ it's counted in your browser and saved only to this browser's local storage. On a shared computer, press clear when you're done. Platform limits change from time to time; check the official help page for anything critical.