What counts as a character?
A character is every letter, number, space, punctuation mark and symbol in your text. Most limits you run into (a tweet, an app store subtitle, a form field) count spaces too, which is why this counter shows characters with spaces as the main number and characters without spaces next to it.
Line breaks are counted as characters in the total, because most websites and apps store them that way. They are left out of the “without spaces” number along with spaces and tabs.
Why emoji can give different counts
Emoji look like one symbol but are often built from several pieces: a thumbs-up with a skin tone is two code points, a family emoji can be seven, and a flag is two “regional indicator” letters. Some tools count those pieces, so one emoji can add 2 or more to the total.
This counter uses the browser’s own text segmentation to count what you see: 👍🏽 is one character, 🇯🇵 is one character, and an “é” typed as “e” plus an accent is one character. That matches how Instagram, Threads and Bluesky count.
X (Twitter) is different on purpose: it gives most emoji and Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters a weight of 2, and every link counts as 23 no matter how long it is. The X bar uses those rules, so you can trust it when you are close to 280.
Common character limits
- X (Twitter) post: 280 (weighted), more for Premium accounts
- Bluesky post: 300
- Threads post: 500
- Instagram caption: 2,200; bio: 150
- LinkedIn post: 3,000
- Page title for Google: about 50–60 characters before it is cut off
- Meta description: about 155–160 characters
- SMS: 160 characters, or 70 if the message contains emoji or other non-GSM characters; longer messages are split into parts of 153 (or 67)
The platform bars above use these numbers and turn amber near the limit and red when you go over.
Characters vs words
Word limits and character limits measure different things. Essays, articles and job applications usually ask for words; social posts, titles, SMS and form fields usually ask for characters. A rough rule for English is 5–6 characters per word including the space, so 280 characters is about 45–55 words. If you need word-focused tools, such as a word goal, keyword density or a writing timer, use the Word Counter.
Checking paragraph and sentence length
Long paragraphs are hard to read on phones. The paragraph and sentence counts help you spot walls of text: if you have 600 words in three paragraphs, consider splitting them. As a guide, web copy reads best with paragraphs of 2–4 sentences and sentences under about 25 words.
Private by design
The counting happens in your browser as you type. Nothing is uploaded, saved or logged, so it is safe to paste drafts, emails or client work.
Counting characters in other languages
Accented letters such as é, ñ and ü count as one character, even when they were typed as a letter plus a separate accent mark. Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters also count as one each, as do Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic and Indic letters. The only place this changes is SMS, where many non-Latin characters force the message into Unicode mode and shrink the limit to 70 characters per part.