Character Counter

About the Character Counter

Many places limit text by characters rather than words. Social media posts, text messages, search engine titles and descriptions, product listings, form fields and app store descriptions all have character limits, and going over them means text is cut off or rejected. Counting characters by hand is slow and error-prone, especially when it is unclear whether spaces count.

This character counter counts characters with and without spaces, and breaks the text down into letters, digits, spaces, punctuation and words. It gives the size in bytes, the number of SMS messages the text would need, and how the text fits common limits for posts, meta descriptions and page titles.

How to Use the Character Counter

Type or paste your text into the box and press Calculate.

How Characters Are Counted

  characters          =  characters as you see them (an emoji or accented letter is one)
  without spaces      =  characters − spaces, tabs and line breaks
  bytes               =  size of the text in UTF-8
  SMS                 =  160 characters (153 a part) in the GSM alphabet,
                         70 (67 a part) if the text needs Unicode

Step-by-Step Example

"Free tip calculator: add a tip at any percentage, see the total, and split the bill."

  Characters:        84
  Spaces:            15
  Without spaces:    84 − 15                  =  69
  Letters:           65, punctuation 4, words 16
  Bytes:             84 (plain English is one byte a character)
  SMS:               1 message (84 of 160)
  Meta description:  76 characters left of 160
  Title:             24 characters over 60

Common Character Limits

Search engines show roughly 60 characters of a page title and 150 to 160 characters of a meta description before cutting them off, although the exact cut-off depends on the width of the letters. Keeping within these limits means your whole message appears in results.

Text Messages and Encoding

A standard SMS can carry 160 characters from the GSM alphabet, which covers English letters, digits and common punctuation. A few characters, such as square brackets, curly brackets and the euro sign, count as two. If the text contains any character outside the GSM alphabet — an emoji, many accented letters or non-Latin scripts — the whole message switches to Unicode, and the limit drops to 70 characters. Longer messages are split into parts, with a little space in each part used to join them back together: 153 characters a part in GSM, or 67 in Unicode. Each part may be charged separately.

Characters and Bytes

Characters are what you see; bytes are how much storage the text takes. In the UTF-8 encoding used on the web, plain English letters, digits and punctuation take one byte each, accented letters such as é take two, most other scripts two or three, and most emoji four. Databases and some systems limit fields by bytes rather than characters, so text with emoji or accents can hit a limit sooner than the character count suggests.

Emoji and Combined Characters

Some symbols that look like one character are built from several. A flag emoji is made of two regional indicator letters, a family emoji can combine several people, and some accented letters are a letter plus a separate accent mark. This calculator counts each of these as one character, as a person would. Some platforms count them as two or more, so leave a small margin when close to a limit.

Writing to a Limit

Writing to a strict character limit is a skill. Put the most important words first, so that if text is cut off, the key message survives. Replace long phrases with shorter ones — "use" instead of "make use of", "because" instead of "due to the fact that" — and remove filler words such as "very" and "really". Numbers written as digits take fewer characters than words. For titles and meta descriptions, include the main keyword early and make every character earn its place.

Characters in Different Languages

Languages vary greatly in how much they say per character. Chinese and Japanese characters each carry much more meaning than an English letter, which is why some platforms give different limits for different scripts. Translations into German or French are often 20 to 30 percent longer than the English original, so leave room when text will be translated.

Line Breaks and Hidden Characters

Line breaks, tabs and some invisible characters copied from documents count as characters too. If a count seems higher than expected, look for double spaces, trailing spaces at the ends of lines, or invisible formatting characters pasted from a word processor, and remove them before submitting text to a strict limit.

Counting Characters for Code and Data

Developers often need character counts for database fields, file names, SMS gateways and form validation. Remember that a field limited to 255 bytes may hold fewer than 255 characters if the text contains accented letters or emoji, so test with realistic text, including names with accents and a few emoji.

Understanding Your Result

Characters gives the total number of characters.

Without spaces gives the count excluding spaces and line breaks.

Breakdown counts letters, digits, spaces, punctuation and words.

Size gives the size in bytes.

SMS shows how many text messages the text needs.

Limits shows how the text fits posts, meta descriptions and titles.

When Should You Use This Calculator?

Writing social media posts.

Checking SEO titles and meta descriptions.

Sending long text messages.

Filling forms with character limits.

Checking database field sizes.

Common Mistakes

Forgetting that spaces count.

Adding one emoji to an SMS and doubling its cost.

Confusing characters with bytes.

Writing a title too long for search results.

Trusting one counter for every platform's rules.