What is a Character Counter?
A character counter counts the individual characters in a piece of text — but "character" means three different things, and the difference decides whether your post gets truncated. UTF-16 code units are what JavaScript's length property returns and what most platforms count. Unicode code points are what a code editor shows. UTF-8 bytes are what the text weighs when stored or sent. This tool shows all three side by side, plus the count without spaces.
The gap between them is real. An emoji like 😀 is one code point, two UTF-16 code units and four UTF-8 bytes. A flag or a skin-tone modifier can stretch to several code points for a single glyph a reader perceives as one character. That is why a caption can look short and still be rejected by a service that counts UTF-16 units.
Underneath the counters, every platform limit in the list is checked live against your text, so you can see at a glance which ones you still fit and how many characters you have left in each.
How to count characters in your text
- Paste or type your text into the box. The eight counters update on every keystroke, and nothing is sent anywhere.
- Read Characters for the UTF-16 count that X, Instagram and most validation rules use. Read Code points when you want the count a human would agree with.
- Check Without spaces for CVs, application forms and any field that imposes a limit on letters rather than total length.
- Scan the platform limit list below. Each row shows how many characters are left or how far over you are, so one paste tells you whether the same text works for X, Instagram, LinkedIn and a meta description.
- Use Clear to reset, or Copy text to put the exact contents on your clipboard.
Character Counter limits and rules
| Item | Limit |
|---|---|
| X (Twitter) post | 280 characters, counting CJK as two and every link as 23 regardless of its real length |
| X Premium post | 25,000 characters |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 characters |
| Instagram bio | 150 characters |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 characters; headline 220; About section 2,600 |
| Facebook post | 63,206 characters |
| YouTube title | 100 characters; description 5,000 |
| TikTok caption | 2,200 characters |
| Threads post | 500 characters |
| Pinterest description | 500 characters |
| SMS | 160 characters in GSM-7, or 70 if UCS-2; concatenated messages drop to 153 and 67 per segment |
| Meta title tag | Aim for 55–60 characters — Google truncates around 580 px |
| Meta description | Aim for 155–160 characters — Google truncates around 920 px |
| Emoji | One code point, two UTF-16 code units, four UTF-8 bytes |
When to use it
- Filling a form field with a hard character cap, where a validator or a payment gateway rejects the submission outright rather than truncating it.
- Writing one message that has to work as a tweet, an Instagram caption and a LinkedIn post without being rewritten three times.
- Checking a meta title and description before publishing a page, so Google shows the whole sentence instead of an ellipsis.
- Trimming a CV, personal statement or university application to a letters-only limit, which is where the without-spaces counter matters.
- Counting an SMS before sending it, to see whether it will go out as one message or split into two billable segments.
Is it private?
Everything runs inside your browser. Your text and files are never uploaded, never stored and never seen by anyone else — including me. You can use the tool with the network tab open and watch no request leave the page. Closing the tab erases the input.
Frequently asked questions
Characters is the UTF-16 count, and any character above U+FFFF is encoded as a surrogate pair — two 16-bit units. So 😀 reads as 2 there, 1 under Code points and 4 under UTF-8 bytes. Services that validate with JavaScript length, including X, charge you the larger number.
280 for a standard account, but links are always counted as 23 characters however long the URL is, and characters from CJK scripts count as two each. X Premium raises the ceiling to 25,000. This tool does not apply X's weighted rules, so treat the 280 row as a raw character check.
Around 155–160 characters. Google truncates the snippet at roughly 920 pixels on desktop, which most English text reaches somewhere in that range. Meta titles truncate earlier, at about 580 pixels or 55–60 characters.
Code points counts Unicode scalar values, so an emoji is 1. Characters counts UTF-16 code units, so the same emoji is 2. For plain ASCII the two are identical; they diverge only when the text contains characters outside the basic multilingual plane.
No. The counting runs in JavaScript in your own tab and no request is made, so nothing you paste here reaches a server or a log.
Related tools
Written and maintained by Md. Nur Hossain Repon.