Pocketools

Character Counter

Count characters with and without spaces, and check limits for posts, SMS and SEO.

Text Runs in your browser
Your text
SMS
Limits

    Runs entirely in your browser. Your data isn't uploaded — this page makes no network request with anything you type or upload, which you can verify in your browser's network tab. How this works.

    What is the Character Counter?

    A character counter tells you exactly how long a piece of text is, in the unit that matters when there is a hard limit: characters. Type or paste a post, a meta description, a product title or a text message and you get the count with and without spaces, the size in bytes, and the word and line count, all updating as you type.

    Beside the counts, the text is measured against the limits people run into every day — a 280-character X post, a 60-character page title, a 160-character meta description, a YouTube title, an Instagram caption and a LinkedIn post — plus a limit of your own. The SMS panel works out whether your message can be sent in the GSM alphabet or needs Unicode, how many parts it will be split into, and which characters are forcing the more expensive encoding. Nothing you type leaves your browser.

    How to use it

    1. Type or paste your text into the editor.
    2. Read the character count with and without spaces, and the byte size.
    3. Check the Limits panel: each bar fills as you type and turns red when you go over.
    4. For text messages, check the SMS panel for the encoding and number of parts.
    5. Press Copy to put a summary of the counts and limits on your clipboard.

    Example

    A promotional message checked against the SMS and X limits.

    Text
    Our monsoon sale is live! Take 20% off every raincoat and umbrella until Sunday — free delivery on orders over ₹999.
    Counts
    Characters:          116 (96 without spaces)
Bytes (UTF-8):       120
X post:              117 / 280
Meta description:    116 / 160
SMS:                 UCS-2 (— and ₹ are not GSM-7), 2 parts

    Features

    • Characters counted as people see them: emoji, flags and accented letters count once
    • Counts with and without spaces, UTF-8 bytes and UTF-16 units
    • Limits for X, meta titles and descriptions, YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn
    • X posts weighted the way X counts them: links as 23, CJK and emoji as 2
    • SMS encoding (GSM-7 or UCS-2) and exact segment count
    • Shows which characters force Unicode SMS, with suggested replacements
    • Add your own limit for forms, ad copy or app store fields
    • Updates as you type; nothing is uploaded

    Frequently asked questions

    Do spaces count as characters?
    Yes — nearly every limit, including X, SMS and search-engine snippets, counts spaces and line breaks. The count without spaces is shown too, for forms and assignments that ask for it.
    Why is an emoji one character here but two or more elsewhere?
    Many emoji are stored as several code units: “👍🏽” is a thumbs-up plus a skin-tone modifier, four UTF-16 units in all. This counter counts what you see, so it is one character. The UTF-16 count is shown as well, because some databases and older systems enforce limits in those units instead.
    How many characters fit in one SMS?
    160, if every character is in the GSM-7 alphabet. A longer message is split into parts of 153 characters, because each part carries a small header. A single character outside that alphabet — a curly apostrophe, an en dash, an emoji or the rupee sign — switches the whole message to UCS-2, which fits 70 characters, or 67 per part. The characters € ^ { } [ ] ~ | and \ are in GSM-7 but take two slots each.
    Why does the X count differ from the plain character count?
    X weights characters: most Latin, Greek and Cyrillic letters count as one, but Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters and emoji count as two, and every link counts as 23 characters however long it is, because X shortens it. The X bar uses that weighting; the other limits use the plain character count.
    How long should a meta title and meta description be?
    Search engines truncate by pixel width, not a fixed number of characters, so these are guidelines: about 60 characters keeps most titles whole, and about 155 to 160 characters keeps most descriptions whole on desktop.
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