Character Counter
Measure the exact length of a text and see at a glance whether it fits an X post, a title tag or a meta description.
Privacy and cost
This tool runs in your browser. What you type or paste is not sent to our servers and it costs nothing to use.
How it works
- Type or paste your text: the counter updates with every character.
- Read characters with and without spaces, UTF-8 bytes, lines, words, sentences and paragraphs.
- Three gauges compare the length to common budgets: 280 characters for X, 30-60 for a title, 70-160 for a meta description.
Example
The title "Free SEO audit tool – check your website in seconds" is 51 characters (42 without spaces) and 53 bytes in UTF-8: it sits inside the recommended range for a title tag.
What the result means
Characters are counted as Unicode code points: an emoji counts as 1 even though it takes 4 bytes. Bytes give the real UTF-8 size: an accented letter takes 2 and so does an Arabic letter. The budgets are indicative: X handles links separately, and Google cuts titles and descriptions by pixel width, not by a character count.
Common problems this tool helps with
- Going over the limit of a post, an SMS or a form field.
- Writing a title or meta description at the right length before pasting it into the CMS.
- Checking the byte size of a text destined for a length-limited database field.
- Comparing length with and without spaces, two measures used by different platforms.
Frequently asked questions
Do spaces and line breaks count?
Yes in the "characters" total. The "without spaces" figure removes spaces, tabs and line breaks.
Why do bytes differ from the character count?
In UTF-8 an unaccented letter takes 1 byte, an accented or Arabic letter 2, a symbol like € 3 and an emoji 4.
Is the 280-character X limit exact?
It is the standard post limit, but X counts links and some characters differently. It is used here as a guide.
Is my text transmitted?
No, everything is calculated in your browser.
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