Character Counter
Type or paste above and the counter tracks your characters live, both with spaces (what every platform limit measures) and without. Whether you're squeezing a post under X's 280 or keeping a meta description inside Google's display window, the reference table below has the limit you're writing against.
Character limits by platform
| Platform / field | Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| X (Twitter) post | 280 | Spaces and punctuation count; links count as a fixed 23 |
| SMS text message | 160 | Per segment; 70 if the message contains emoji or other non-basic characters |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 | Truncated after ~125 characters in feeds until tapped |
| Instagram bio | 150 | Line breaks count toward the total |
| TikTok caption | 2,200 | Hashtags count toward the same budget |
| YouTube title | 100 | Hard limit |
| YouTube description | 5,000 | Only the first ~150 characters show before the fold |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 | “See more” folds the text after ~210 characters |
| LinkedIn headline | 220 | Shown under your name across the platform |
| Facebook post | 63,206 | Effectively unlimited for normal writing |
| Reddit post title | 300 | The body has a separate, much larger limit |
| Pinterest pin description | 500 | Roughly the first 50 characters show in feeds |
| Meta description | ~155-160 | Not a hard limit; Google truncates the display |
| Page title tag | ~60 | Display truncation in search results, not a hard cap |
| Email subject line | ~60 | Mobile clients often cut nearer 35 characters |
| Image alt text | ~125 | A convention for screen readers rather than a hard cap |
| Google Ads headline | 30 | Per headline field |
| Google Ads description | 90 | Per description field |
These are the figures commonly cited for each field, and platforms revise them without announcement. When a service shows you its own live counter, trust that number at the moment of posting over any table, including this one.
Notice that the list mixes two very different kinds of limit. Some are hard caps enforced by the software: X will not accept the 281st character, and a YouTube title stops at 100. Others are display conventions, where nothing is rejected but the surplus is simply never shown. Title tags and meta descriptions are the clearest examples, and treating them as hard limits is the most common mistake people make with this table.
With spaces or without?
Almost every real-world limit counts spaces: X, SMS, Instagram, and search-display budgets all measure the full string. The characters-without-spaces figure matters mainly for translation billing and certain academic counts. This counter shows both at once so you never have to guess which one a limit means.
The gap between the two numbers is bigger than it looks. Ordinary English prose is about 17 percent whitespace, so a 280-character post carries roughly 45 to 50 spaces. If you are working from a without-spaces figure and comparing it to a platform limit, you are working with a number that is a sixth too small.
Words, characters, and the conversion between them
English words average around five letters, and adding the space that follows gives a working figure of six characters per word. That single number converts almost any character limit into a word budget:
| Character limit | Roughly equals |
|---|---|
| 150 characters | ~25 words |
| 280 characters | ~45-50 words |
| 500 characters | ~80-85 words |
| 1,000 characters | ~165 words |
| 2,200 characters | ~360 words |
| 4,000 characters | ~650-700 words |
| 5,300 characters | ~880 words |
Treat these as planning estimates rather than guarantees. Technical writing with longer vocabulary runs fewer words per character, and text full of short function words runs more. When a limit is tight, count rather than convert.
How SMS segments actually work
The 160-character SMS limit is not arbitrary. It comes from a 7-bit character encoding that fits 160 characters into a single 140-byte message. Step outside that basic character set, by using an emoji, a curly quotation mark, or a letter with an accent, and the whole message switches to a 16-bit encoding where only 70 characters fit.
Longer messages are split into segments and reassembled on the recipient's phone, which is invisible to them but not to your bill: each segment is charged separately, and concatenated segments hold slightly less than a standalone one because part of each is spent on the reassembly information. In practice that means 153 characters per segment in the basic encoding and 67 in the extended one. A single curly apostrophe pasted in from a word processor can therefore turn a one-segment message into three.
Title tags and meta descriptions are measured in pixels
Search engines truncate on display width rather than character count, because a line of narrow letters fits more characters than a line of wide ones. The familiar figures of roughly 60 characters for a title and 155 to 160 for a description are useful approximations of the underlying pixel budget, not rules the search engine applies.
The practical consequences are worth knowing. A title in capital letters truncates sooner than the same title in lower case. A title full of narrow letters can survive well past 60 characters. Nothing is penalized for being long; the surplus is simply not shown, so the working rule is to put what matters in the first 50 characters and treat everything after that as a bonus.
Writing to a tight character limit
When you are 30 characters over, these are the moves that cost the least meaning:
- Cut the link or shorten it. On most platforms a long tracking URL is the single largest item in the budget.
- Drop the hashtags to two. Six hashtags routinely cost 60 to 100 characters for very little reach.
- Replace long connectors. "because" for "due to the fact that" saves 17 characters on its own. The wordiness guide has a full swap list.
- Use digits, not words. "5" instead of "five" saves three characters every time.
- Delete the introduction. Short-form posts almost always start one clause too early.
- Avoid smart punctuation in SMS. A single curly quotation mark can halve the characters available in a text message.
What not to do is strip the spaces or the punctuation. Both count, but both are also what makes the text readable, and a post that fits by being unreadable has not solved the problem.
Common questions
Do spaces count as characters?
Yes. Every platform limit on this page counts spaces, punctuation, emoji, and line breaks as characters. The counter above shows both totals: characters with spaces (what limits use) and without.
Why does my text split into multiple SMS messages?
A single SMS segment holds 160 characters (or just 70 if the text contains emoji or other non-basic characters). Longer messages are split into segments and rejoined on the recipient's phone; carriers may bill per segment.
Is the meta description limit really 160 characters?
It's a display convention, not a rule. Google typically shows about 155-160 characters before truncating with an ellipsis, so writers treat that as the practical budget. Nothing breaks if you exceed it; the extra text just isn't shown.
Do emoji count as one character?
Usually two. Most emoji are stored as a pair of units rather than a single one, so the counter above and several social platforms both charge two characters for one emoji. Emoji built from several joined symbols, such as skin tones and family groups, can cost considerably more.
How many characters are in a word on average?
About six in ordinary English prose, counting the space that follows the word. That makes 280 characters roughly 45 to 50 words, and 4,000 characters roughly 650 to 700 words. Technical vocabulary raises the average and pushes the word equivalent down.
Do hashtags and mentions count toward the limit?
Yes. Hashtags, mentions, and emoji all count as ordinary characters on every major platform, so a post finishing with six hashtags has spent 60 to 100 characters before the text is read. Plan the tags into the budget rather than adding them at the end.
Do links count as characters?
On X, every link is charged as a fixed length of 23 characters no matter how long the actual URL is, because the platform shortens it. Most other platforms count the URL exactly as typed, which is why a long tracking link can consume a third of a caption.
What is the difference between characters and bytes?
A character is one symbol as you see it; a byte is one unit of storage. Plain English letters take one byte each, while accented letters, non-Latin scripts, and emoji take two to four. Limits described in bytes are therefore stricter than the same number described in characters for anything beyond basic English.