What is a character counter?
A character counter reports exactly how many characters your text contains, both including and excluding spaces. Many fields online enforce a hard character limit, so knowing your count before you publish saves you from awkward truncation. This counter updates every figure live as you type, entirely in your browser.
Common character limits
| Where | Limit |
|---|---|
| X / Twitter post | 280 characters |
| SMS text message | 160 characters per segment |
| SEO meta description | ~155-160 characters |
| SEO title tag | ~60 characters |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 characters |
| Instagram bio | 150 characters |
| YouTube title | 100 characters |
Characters with vs. without spaces
Some platforms count spaces toward your limit and some do not. SMS and Twitter count every space; certain academic and print specifications ask for a count that excludes spaces. This tool shows both so you can satisfy whichever rule applies.
Privacy
All counting happens locally — nothing you paste is uploaded to a server, which makes the tool safe for drafts, private notes and confidential text.
Frequently asked questions
- Does it count spaces as characters?
- It shows both totals — characters including spaces, and characters excluding spaces — so you can use whichever your platform requires.
- Are emoji counted as one character?
- Emoji and many symbols are made of multiple code units, so they may add more than one to the character count, just as they do on the target platform.
- Is there a limit on how much text I can paste?
- No. Counting runs locally in your browser, so even very long documents are handled instantly.