Character Counter
Type or paste text to see how many characters it contains, with and without spaces, how many bytes it takes in UTF-8 and how many lines, words and digits it has. Pick a platform limit such as X, SMS or a meta description and a progress bar shows exactly how many characters remain.
Count the Characters in Your Text
Limit check
Character statistics
How to Use the Character Counter
- Type or paste your text into the box; the numbers update as you type.
- Choose a limit from Check against a limit (or enter your own) to see a progress bar and the text “N characters remaining”.
- Read the statistics below: characters, characters without spaces, visible characters, UTF-8 bytes, words, lines, letters, digits, spaces and punctuation.
- Use Reset to clear everything.
About This Tool
Social media managers fitting a post into a limit, SEO writers trimming titles and descriptions, developers sizing database fields, and anyone writing text messages or form answers with a maximum length.
Input: Plain text · Output: Statistics.
Features and Limitations
Features
- Counts Unicode characters, so an emoji or a letter outside the Basic Multilingual Plane counts once, not twice.
- Separate counts for characters, characters without spaces, visible characters (grapheme clusters) and UTF-8 bytes.
- Eleven ready-made limits plus a custom limit; the status is written out in words as well as shown on the bar.
- Instant results with no button, and the text never leaves your browser.
Limitations
- The limit check counts Unicode characters. X applies its own weighting (links count as 23 characters, some scripts count double), and SMS limits depend on the GSM alphabet, so treat those two as close estimates.
- Search engines truncate titles and descriptions by pixel width, not by characters, so a text that fits the character limit can still be cut off.
- “Visible characters” depends on the grapheme rules of your browser and may differ slightly from other software for very new emoji.
- Results are computed in your browser; nothing you enter is sent to a server.
Example
The text “Café ☕” has 6 characters including the space, 5 without it, and takes 9 bytes in UTF-8 because é uses 2 bytes and the coffee emoji uses 3.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between characters and bytes?
A character is one symbol you see; a byte is a unit of storage. In UTF-8, plain English letters take 1 byte, accented letters usually 2, most Asian characters 3 and emoji 4. Database columns and some APIs limit bytes rather than characters.
Are spaces and line breaks counted?
Yes. “Characters” includes spaces and line breaks. “Characters (no spaces)” leaves out every whitespace character, including tabs and line breaks.
How long can a meta description be?
Google does not publish a fixed number of characters; it cuts snippets to fit a pixel width, which is roughly 150 to 160 characters on desktop. The 160 limit here is a practical guide, not a guarantee.
Why does my emoji count as one character here but two on another site?
Some tools count UTF-16 code units, in which many emoji take two units. This tool counts Unicode characters, and also shows visible characters so an emoji with a skin tone still reads as one.
Is my text stored or sent anywhere?
No. The counting happens in your browser and nothing you type is uploaded.
Related Tools
More like this: all Counters & Statistics tools, all Text & Writing tools or the TinySandy home page.