Character Counter
Count characters with and without spaces, plus words, lines and sentences, with live progress against meta title, meta description, SMS and tweet limits.
Characters
0
No spaces
0
Words
0
Lines
0
Sentences
0
Characters are counted by Unicode code point, so an emoji or an accented letter counts as one — even though it may take more than one byte to store. SMS is the exception: messages using non-GSM characters (including most emoji) switch to UCS-2 encoding and a single segment then holds only 70 characters. Everything is counted in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere.
Counting characters against real limits
Most writing has a ceiling somewhere: 60 characters before a page title is truncated in search results, 160 for the description snippet, 160 for a single SMS, 280 for a post on X. This counter shows the running total with and without spaces, plus words, lines and sentences, and draws a progress bar against each of those limits so you can see how much room is left at a glance.
Characters are counted by Unicode code point. An emoji, an accented "é", or a Chinese character each count as one, even though "é" may be stored as two bytes and an emoji as four or more. This matches what a reader perceives, but it is not always what a downstream system measures — a database column defined as VARCHAR(160) counts differently again, in bytes or in UTF-16 units depending on the engine.
SMS is the trap worth knowing. A message written entirely in the GSM-7 alphabet fits 160 characters per segment. Include one character outside that set — a curly quote, an em dash, an emoji, any non-Latin letter — and the entire message is re-encoded as UCS-2, dropping the segment size to 70 characters. Long messages are then split and each part carries header overhead, so "just over the limit" can double your send cost.
Search-engine limits are really pixel-width limits. Google truncates titles at roughly 600px and descriptions at roughly 920px, which works out to about 60 and 160 characters of average-width text. Wide characters (uppercase, "W", "m") eat the budget faster; narrow ones ("i", "l") leave more room. Treat the counts as guidance and check the actual result in a SERP preview.
All counting is done in your browser as you type. Nothing is stored or sent, and the tool works offline.
Key formulas (reference)
characters = [...text].length // Unicode code points without spaces = [...text.replace(/\s/g, "")].length words = text.trim().split(/\s+/).length lines = text.split(/\r\n|\r|\n/).length
Related tools
These free tools pair well with this page — open them in a new tab to finish your workflow.
Frequently Asked Questions
How are characters counted?
By Unicode code point, so an emoji, an accented letter, or a CJK character each count as one — even though they may occupy more than one byte in storage or more than one UTF-16 unit in JavaScript. Spaces, tabs and line breaks are included in the "characters" total and excluded from "no spaces".
Why does the SMS limit show 160?
A single SMS using the standard GSM-7 alphabet holds 160 characters. If your message contains characters outside that set — including most emoji, curly quotes, or non-Latin scripts — the whole message switches to UCS-2 encoding and a single segment then holds only 70 characters, with longer messages split into 67-character parts.
What are the meta title and description limits for?
Search engines truncate the clickable title in results at roughly 60 characters and the grey snippet at roughly 160. These are pixel-width limits in practice, so the character counts are guidance rather than hard cutoffs, but staying under them keeps your text from being cut with an ellipsis.
Is the Twitter/X limit still 280?
Standard accounts are limited to 280 characters. Some paid tiers allow much longer posts, and links are shortened to a fixed length by the platform. Most non-Latin characters count as one, though some scripts (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) historically counted as two toward the limit.
Does it count words and lines too?
Yes. Words are runs of non-whitespace separated by spaces or line breaks; lines are counted by line-break characters; sentences are estimated from terminal punctuation (. ! ?). Word and sentence counts are approximate for text with abbreviations or unusual punctuation.
Is my text uploaded anywhere?
No. Counting happens entirely in your browser as you type. Nothing is stored or transmitted, and the tool works offline.
How is this different from the Word Counter?
The Word Counter focuses on readability metrics like reading time and paragraph count for long-form writing. The Character Counter focuses on fitting text into hard limits — SMS segments, tweets, meta tags, form fields — with a live progress bar for each.