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Text Tools

Character Counter

Paste your text and see the character count update live — with and without spaces, plus words, sentences and more.

  • Free, no signup
  • No upload — runs on your device
  • No watermark
  • Unlimited use

Character Counter

Processed locally

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Which character count a platform uses is never obvious

The reason a character counter matters is that platforms enforce limits, and they do not agree on how to count. Most social networks and SMS count every character including spaces, so a 280-character tweet really means 280 including the gaps between words. But some systems count differently: a URL is often collapsed to a fixed length regardless of its real characters, and an emoji can count as one character to a human and two or more to the system underneath.

The limits worth knowing: a single SMS is 160 characters before it splits into two billed messages; a meta description is safe up to about 155 before search engines truncate it; a Twitter/X post is 280; a LinkedIn headline is 220. Going one character over a meta description does not break anything, but it does mean the end of your carefully written summary is replaced with an ellipsis in search results.

This tool shows both counts — with and without spaces — because you need the with-spaces figure for platform limits and the without-spaces figure for the rare academic or legal context that excludes them.

How it works

  1. Paste or type your text
  2. Read the character count — with and without spaces
  3. Check it against your platform's limit

A character count is usually about fitting a limit — a tweet, an SMS, a meta description. Once you are trimming to fit, Remove Extra Spaces strips the hidden double spaces that waste characters, and Find and Replace swaps long phrases for shorter ones in one pass. To count words rather than characters, Word Counter presents the same figures with reading and speaking time.

Why nothing uploads. Every operation on this page happens inside your browser using JavaScript and WebAssembly. Your file is read into memory, processed, and offered back as a download. It is never transmitted. Disconnect from the internet after this page loads and the tool keeps working.

Frequently asked questions

Does the character count include spaces?
Both counts are shown. Almost every platform limit — Twitter, SMS, meta descriptions — counts spaces, so use the with-spaces figure for those. The without-spaces count is only needed in specific academic or legal contexts.
What is the character limit for a tweet, SMS or meta description?
A Twitter/X post is 280 characters, a single SMS is 160 before it splits, and a search meta description is safe to about 155 before it gets truncated. All count spaces.
Why does my emoji count as more than one character?
Many emoji are stored as multiple underlying units, so a system may count one emoji as two or more characters even though you see a single symbol. This counter reports the length as the browser measures it.
Does it count words too?
Yes. Alongside characters it shows words, sentences, paragraphs and lines, so you can use it as a full word counter as well.
Is my text uploaded anywhere?
No. Counting happens as you type, in your browser. The text never leaves the page.

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