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Check text length instantly -- count characters with and without spaces
Read more: Character Counter for Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn Limits
A character counter is a tool that counts the number of individual characters in a piece of text, including letters, numbers, punctuation, and spaces. Unlike a word counter, which groups characters into words, a character counter gives you the exact length of your text as platforms and systems see it.
Character counts matter because most digital platforms enforce strict character limits. A tweet that is 281 characters will not post. An Instagram bio over 150 characters will be truncated. An SEO meta description beyond 155 characters may be cut off in search results. This tool lets you check your text length before you publish.
| Platform / Context | Character limit | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Twitter / X post | 280 | URLs count as 23 chars; Premium: 25,000 |
| Twitter / X bio | 160 | Displayed on profile page |
| Instagram bio | 150 | Includes spaces and line breaks |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 | Only first 125 chars visible before "more" |
| Instagram hashtag | 30 per post | Each hashtag can be up to 30 chars |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 | First ~140 chars visible before "see more" |
| LinkedIn About section | 2,600 | Profile summary |
| LinkedIn headline | 220 | Displayed under your name |
| Facebook post | 63,206 | Effectively unlimited for most uses |
| YouTube video title | 100 | Recommended: under 70 for full display |
| YouTube description | 5,000 | First 100-150 chars most visible |
| Pinterest pin description | 500 | First 50-60 chars shown in feed |
| TikTok caption | 4,000 | Previously 150, expanded in 2023 |
| Meta description (SEO) | 155 | Google may truncate beyond this |
| Title tag (SEO) | 60 | Google truncates at ~580px width |
| SMS text message | 160 | GSM-7 encoding; 70 for Unicode chars |
| Email subject line | ~78 | RFC 2822 recommends 78; display varies |
Word counts are the standard measurement for long-form writing: essays, articles, books, and blog posts. But when working with digital platforms, character count is what actually matters. A 50-word tweet might be well under the word limit you imagine, but its 285 characters would prevent it from posting.
Characters and words also diverge significantly across languages. English averages about 5 characters per word (including the space). German words average 6-7 characters. Finnish and Hungarian words can easily exceed 10 characters. If you write in multiple languages, character counting is more reliable than word counting for estimating text length.
For SEO specifically, character count controls what users see in search results. Your title tag should be under 60 characters so Google displays it in full. Your meta description should be 120-155 characters to avoid truncation. These are strict character limits, not word limits.
This tool shows both: total characters (including spaces) and characters without spaces. Most platforms -- Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and SMS -- count spaces as characters toward their limit. The "No spaces" count is useful for database field sizing, encoding calculations, or when a specification explicitly excludes whitespace.
This tool counts JavaScript string length, which is measured in UTF-16 code units. Most characters -- including accented letters (e, n), CJK characters, and common symbols -- count as 1. Some emoji and characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane use surrogate pairs and count as 2. This matches how most web platforms measure character length.
The limits you will encounter most often are: Twitter/X at 280 characters, Instagram bio at 150 characters, meta descriptions at 155 characters, and title tags at 60 characters. If you write for LinkedIn, the 3,000-character post limit and 2,600-character About section limit are also important to know. See the full table above for a complete reference.