Character Counter
Free character counter with a live platform-fit bar for Twitter/X (280), LinkedIn headline (220), email subject (78), Google Ads (30/90), YouTube, and meta tags. Composition pie. 100% private.
Composition
+ 1 special characters (emoji, accented letters, symbols)
Platform limits
How it works
A short, focused workflow — input, run, read the result.
Paste your text
Drop a tweet, headline, ad copy, or any text into the box. The character total, breakdown, and platform-fit bars update live.
Read the composition
The four-up card shows letters, digits, punctuation, and spaces so you know what's actually in your text, useful for catching accidental special characters.
Scan the platform-fit list
Each platform shows your count over its limit with a green / amber / red progress bar. Aim for green on every platform you care about.
Edit and re-check
Make edits in your editor of choice and re-paste. Iterate until every row you care about is in the green.
What is a character count, and why do platform limits trip up so many posts?
A character count is the raw number of letters, digits, punctuation, and spaces in a piece of text. Twitter caps at 280, Google Ads headlines at 30, meta descriptions around 155-160, and SMS at 160. Every platform measures it slightly differently, and most writers find out about the difference after their copy is already truncated.
What this character counter does
Every character measurement that matters across the platforms you publish to.
- Total character count — counts every character including spaces, matching what Twitter, LinkedIn, and most social platforms measure.
- No-spaces count — counts characters excluding spaces, matching how SMS carriers bill segments.
- Composition pie — breaks the text into letters, digits, punctuation, and spaces so you can spot accidental artifacts.
- Twitter / X fit bar — compares your text against the 280-character post limit with green, amber, red status.
- Google Ads fit bar — checks against the 30-character headline and 90-character description caps, both hard limits.
- Meta tag fit bar — compares against the 60-character meta title and 155-160 character meta description sweet spots.
- LinkedIn fit bar — checks against the 220-character headline and 210-character feed-preview truncation point.
- SMS segment calculator — estimates the number of SMS segments (160 per segment, 70 with emoji) for your text.
Who uses this character counter
Anyone whose copy has to land inside a hard limit on a platform that does not negotiate.
You're writing 5 tweets a day and losing 2 of them to 'your post is too long' errors.
Paste the draft, see the live count, trim to 280 before you hit Post, and never see the error again.
You're building 15 responsive search ad headlines and every one has to fit inside 30 characters.
See the exact count per headline as you write, catch the 35-character offenders, and ship a clean ad group.
You're A/B testing 8 subject lines and need them all under 78 characters for mobile inbox preview.
Compare every variant against the 78-char limit at a glance and pick the winners without guesswork.
You're writing 50 meta descriptions this week and 12 of them are getting truncated in the SERP.
Hit the 155-character target on the first draft with a live counter visible while you write.
You're setting up SMS notifications and need to know whether a 180-character alert fits in 2 segments.
Use the segment calculator to confirm the message length and avoid mid-message billing surprises.
You're rewriting LinkedIn posts from long-form blogs and need to hit the 3,000-char ceiling without losing the hook.
Watch the count climb as you paste, stop at 3,000, and keep the first 210 characters punchy enough for the feed.
Related glossary terms
Want a deeper dive? These glossary entries explain the concepts behind this tool.
Frequently Asked
Questions
Everything you need to know about character counter.
280 characters for standard Twitter / X posts. URLs always count as 23 characters regardless of length. X Premium subscribers can post up to 25,000 characters, but engagement on long tweets is significantly lower. Our counter shows the standard 280 limit and flags anything over.
30 characters per headline, with up to 15 headlines allowed per responsive search ad. Descriptions are limited to 90 characters, with up to 4 per ad. Headlines can be shown in any combination or order, so aim for 15 unique headlines that work alone and in any pair. Per Google's 2025 responsive ad guidance, ads with 11-15 headlines get 9% more clicks than ads with fewer than 5.
LinkedIn allows up to 3,000 characters per post, but the feed preview truncates after 210 characters with a 'see more' link. Posts between 1,200-1,600 characters consistently get the highest engagement per LinkedIn's 2025 algorithm study. The first 210 characters are everything. They determine whether someone clicks 'see more' or scrolls past.
Yes, almost every platform counts spaces. The single major exception is SMS billing, where the carrier counts the message body without spaces for segment calculation (though the user sees and types the full text). Our counter shows both the total (with spaces) and the no-spaces count so you can see exactly what each platform is measuring.
It depends on the platform. On Twitter, an emoji counts as 2 characters. On Instagram, it counts as 1. On most desktop and web platforms, each emoji is 1 'character' but uses 4 bytes of UTF-8 storage. Our counter counts emoji as 1 character each to match what most editors show, but be aware that if you're targeting SMS, the carrier will reject any message with emoji if it's not in Unicode mode, which reduces your segment limit from 160 to 70 characters.
Yes on both. Completely free, no signup, no per-check limit, no email gate. And 100% private: every count is computed in your browser via JavaScript. Your text is never sent to our servers, never logged, never stored, and never used to train any AI. Open DevTools → Network while you use it: zero outbound requests carry your text.
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