How to use the Character Counter
- 1
Paste or type your text in the input area.
- 2
Read the totals for characters, characters without spaces, letters, digits and UTF-8 bytes.
- 3
Check the limit bars to see whether your text fits common platforms.
Features & benefits
Emoji-accurate
Counts user-perceived characters, so a family emoji counts as one character, not seven.
Platform limit bars
Instant progress bars for X posts, SMS, meta titles and meta descriptions.
Byte size
Shows UTF-8 byte length — useful for databases and APIs with byte limits.
Detailed breakdown
Separate counts for letters, digits, spaces, punctuation and lines.
Characters, code points and bytes
What looks like one character on screen can be stored as several pieces of data. Emoji with skin tones, flags and many accented letters are combinations of multiple Unicode code points. This tool uses the browser's grapheme segmenter so its count matches what you actually see.
Different platforms count in different ways. SMS messages using only basic Latin characters allow 160 characters per message, but a single emoji switches the message to Unicode encoding and reduces the limit to 70. Byte counts matter when software stores text in fixed-size fields.
Frequently asked questions
Do spaces count as characters?
On most platforms, yes. We show both totals — with spaces and without — so you can use whichever your target requires.
What is the ideal meta description length?
Google typically displays around 150–160 characters. Our limit bar uses 160 as a guide.
Why do emoji count differently on some sites?
Some systems count UTF-16 code units, in which an emoji can count as two or more. We show the human-visible count, which is what most modern platforms use.