Candid Tools

Character Counter

Character Counter counts characters with and without spaces as you type and checks them against X, LinkedIn, Instagram, meta description and SMS limits, in your browser.

0Characters
0Characters without spaces
0Words
0Sentences
0Paragraphs
0 secReading time

Details

Lines
0
Average word length
0 characters
Average sentence length
0 words
Reading time (238 words/min)
0 sec
Speaking time (150 words/min)
0 sec

Top keywords

The most used words appear here as you type.

Platform limits

  • X (Twitter) post source0 / 280 (280 left)

    Approximate, using X's weighting: most Latin text counts 1, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and emoji count 2, and each link counts 23.

  • LinkedIn post source0 / 3,000 (3,000 left)
  • Instagram caption source0 / 2,200 (2,200 left)

    Instagram also allows at most 30 hashtags and 20 @ mentions per caption.

  • Meta description (guideline) source0 / 160 (160 left)

    Not a hard limit. Google says a meta description can be any length and cuts the snippet to fit the screen; 155-160 characters is a common rule of thumb, not a Google number.

  • SMS, GSM-7 source0 / 160 (160 left)

    Plain GSM-7 text: 160 per message. Characters such as € [ ] { } ~ ^ | \ count as 2.

Characters here are the ones you see, so an emoji or an accented letter counts once; a platform may count some of them as 2. Limits checked October 2026.

At a glance

Accepts
Typed or pasted text, or a .txt or .md file
Outputs
Character, word and sentence counts, and a bar per platform limit with what's left
Where it runs
Entirely in your browser, on your device
What leaves your device
Nothing - what you type stays in this tab
Limits
X's weighted count is a close estimate (links detected by pattern); SMS assumes standard GSM-7 or UCS-2 without national language tables
Account
Not required - there is no sign-up
Price
Free, with no watermark and no usage cap
Made by
Visrut
Last updated
13 October 2026

Type or paste a post, caption, bio or text message to see its length in characters, with and without spaces, as you type. Bars show how much room is left against X (280, weighted), LinkedIn (3,000), Instagram (2,200), a meta description (about 160, a guideline) and an SMS (160, or 70 once a character outside the GSM-7 alphabet slips in). Emoji and accented letters count as the single characters you see. Nothing you type leaves your browser.

Tips for staying under a limit

Need word counts, reading time or keyword density too? They are all on the same page here, and in the Word Counter they come first.

Frequently asked questions

How are characters counted? Do emoji count as one?

Characters are counted the way you see them on screen (grapheme clusters, via Intl.Segmenter), so an emoji, a flag, a family emoji built from several code points, or an accented letter typed as two code points each count as one character. Many simple counters use the raw string length instead, which counts 👍 as 2 and 👨‍👩‍👧 as 8. Some platforms do count that way, which is why the X and SMS bars use their own rules.

Do spaces count as characters?

Yes, on every platform listed here: X, LinkedIn, Instagram and SMS all count spaces and line breaks. The second number, characters without spaces, is for forms and assignments that ask for it.

What are the platform limits based on?

Each bar links to the official page it comes from (checked October 2026): X counts most Latin characters as 1, CJK characters and emoji as 2 and every link as 23, up to 280. LinkedIn posts allow 3,000 characters and Instagram captions 2,200 (plus at most 30 hashtags). The meta description bar is a guideline only: Google says there is no length limit and it trims snippets to fit the screen.

Why does my text message switch to 70 characters?

A standard SMS carries 140 bytes. Text that only uses the GSM-7 alphabet (basic Latin letters, digits, common punctuation and a few accented letters) fits 160 characters; a single character outside it, such as a curly quote ’, an emoji or a Cyrillic letter, makes the phone send the whole message as UCS-2, which fits 70. Longer messages are split into parts of 153 (GSM-7) or 67 (UCS-2). The bar shows which characters caused the switch, so you can replace them.

Why does X show a different number from the character count?

X weighs characters: most Latin letters, digits and punctuation count 1, Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters and emoji count 2, and any link counts as 23 however long it is. The X bar applies those rules, so 140 Chinese characters already fill a post. It recognises links that start with http, https or www and bare domains on common endings like .com; treat it as a close estimate and let X have the final say.

Is my text uploaded or saved?

No. Everything is counted in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere. The text is only kept if you tick "Remember this text on this device" (off by default): it is then stored in this browser's local storage until you untick it or clear it.

Sources