How to use Character Counter
- Paste or type your text.
- Read the character counts with and without spaces and the byte size.
- Check the table to see which limits your text fits within.
About this tool
Many platforms limit text by characters rather than words. The table compares your text against typical limits for X (280), Instagram captions (2,200), SMS segments (160), page titles (about 60) and meta descriptions (about 155). Search engines truncate by pixel width, so treat the SEO values as guidelines.
Emoji and some symbols are stored as more than one character in UTF-8, which is why the byte count can be larger than the character count.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Are emoji counted as one character?
- Each emoji is counted as one character here, but some platforms count certain emoji as two.
- What is the UTF-8 byte size for?
- It shows how much storage the text needs, which matters for databases and SMS encodings.
- Are the limits exact?
- Platform limits change over time. Use them as a quick guide and confirm in the platform's own editor.
Related tools
- Word CounterPaste or type your text to count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs, with reading time.
- SERP Snippet PreviewSee your page as it may appear in Google results.
- Case ConverterChange the capitalisation of any text, or convert it to a programming naming style.
- Uppercase ConverterTurn all letters in your text into capitals with one paste.
- Lowercase ConverterTurn all letters in your text into small letters with one paste.
- Title Case ConverterCapitalise headlines and titles the way most English style guides expect.