How to count characters
This char counter works like any character count online: no sign-up, no upload, results on every keystroke.
- Type or paste your text into the box above.
- Read the top row: total characters, characters without spaces, words and letters. This doubles as a word and character counter.
- Check the breakdown row to see the spaces, line breaks, digits, punctuation and symbols.
- Compare against the limit you need: an X post, an Instagram caption or a text message. A meter turns red when you go over.
Character count with spaces vs. without spaces
The character count including spaces is every character in the box: letters, digits, punctuation, symbols, spaces and line breaks. The character counter without spaces removes spaces, tabs and line breaks and keeps everything else. For “Hello world” that is 11 characters with spaces and 10 without.
Which one to use depends on who sets the character limit. Social networks and phones count spaces, because a space takes room like any other character. Some forms, assignments and translation quotes use the count without spaces instead, so read the instructions first.
Letter counter, space counter and symbol counter
- Letters are any letters from any alphabet, including accented ones such as é or ñ. An accent typed as a separate combining mark still counts with its letter as one.
- Spaces are ordinary spaces, tabs and non-breaking spaces. Line breaks are shown on their own line.
- Punctuation covers marks such as . , ; : ! ? ’ “ ” ( ) and dashes.
- Symbols & emoji are everything else, such as $, %, +, © and emoji. A skin-tone or family emoji and a flag each count as one character, because that is what you see on screen.
Character limits on X, Instagram and SMS
| Where | Limit | How it is counted |
|---|---|---|
| X (Twitter) post | 280 | Most Latin text counts 1 per character; emoji and Chinese, Japanese or Korean characters count 2; any link counts 23 (X Developer Platform, twitter-text ranges) |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 | Maximum caption length, along with 30 hashtags and 20 @ tags (Instagram Graph API). The meter counts visible characters. |
| SMS, plain characters | 160 per message, 153 per part when longer | GSM 7-bit alphabet (3GPP TS 23.038). Characters such as € [ ] { } ~ ^ | \ take two places. |
| SMS with emoji or other characters | 70 per message, 67 per part when longer | One character outside the GSM alphabet switches the whole message to UCS-2. Long messages are split into parts that each carry a joining header (3GPP TS 23.040), which is why a part holds less than a single message. |
Your phone may still show a long text as one message, but it is sent as several parts. Use the SMS box above to see how many parts your text needs.
Example
The message “Meet me at 5:30 😊” gives these results in the character count tool:
- 17 characters with spaces and 13 without (4 spaces removed).
- 8 letters, 3 digits, 1 punctuation mark (the colon) and 1 emoji.
- 18 of 280 on X, because the emoji counts as 2 there.
- 1 SMS, but in UCS-2: the emoji alone lowers the single-message limit from 160 to 70 characters.