What is counted
The main number counts every character you can see or type: letters, digits, spaces, punctuation, symbols and line breaks. The count follows what a reader sees, so an emoji or a letter with an accent counts as one character, even though a program may store it with more than one code. Next to it you get the characters without spaces, words, sentences, lines, paragraphs, bytes and the reading time.
Check a character limit
Choose a limit from the list, or enter your own. A bar shows how much of the limit you used, and the counter tells you how many characters are left or how many you are over.
| Where | Typical limit | Note |
|---|---|---|
| X (Twitter) post | 280 | X weights some characters and links, so its own count can differ |
| SMS, one message | 160 | 70 per message when the text has non-Latin characters or emoji |
| Meta description | about 160 | Search engines cut by pixel width, so treat it as a guide |
| Title tag | about 60 | Also cut by pixel width |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 | |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 | |
| YouTube video title | 100 | |
| Google Ads headline | 30 | Descriptions allow 90 |
Platforms change their rules from time to time, so check the current limit where you publish.
Characters and bytes
A character is not always one byte. Plain English letters take one byte in UTF-8, accented letters take two, and many emoji take four. The bytes number matters for databases, SMS and APIs that limit size in bytes and not in characters.
Line breaks
Each line break counts as one character, and Windows style line endings are treated as one break. If the rule you must follow ignores line breaks, use the number without spaces, or the characters without spaces counter, where you can choose what counts as a space.
Want only the letters? Use the letter counter or letters only counter. For words and lines in depth, see the word frequency counter and the line counter. The letter count guide shows the same counts in Excel and code.