Character Counter

Why character counts matter

Many places online enforce hard character limits, and going over means your text is cut off or rejected. This counter tracks characters, words, lines, and UTF-8 bytes in real time, with live limit bars for the platforms people hit most often, so you can trim to fit before you publish rather than after.

Characters with vs. without spaces

The same text has two valid character counts depending on whether spaces are included. "With spaces" is the total length as typed and is what most social and SEO limits use. "Without spaces" counts only visible characters and is sometimes requested for translation pricing or strict typographic limits. This tool shows both so you always have the number a given field expects.

Common limits to know

• Google title tag: aim for about 50 to 60 characters before it gets truncated in search results.
• Google meta description: roughly 150 to 160 characters.
• X (Twitter) post: 280 characters.
• SMS: 160 characters per single message (longer texts split into segments).

Characters vs. bytes

A character is not always one byte. In UTF-8, plain English letters take one byte each, but accented letters, other scripts, and emoji take two to four. Some systems (databases, SMS, certain APIs) limit by bytes rather than characters, so an emoji-heavy message can exceed a byte limit while looking short. This tool's live byte count catches that.