🔢 Character Counter
Count characters, letters, digits, and check platform limits
By FontGenio Editorial Team · Last updated: October 12, 2026
A character counter tells you exactly how many characters your text contains — with and without spaces — so you can fit bios, captions, titles, and messages inside platform limits. This free character counter also breaks your text into letters, digits, spaces, and special characters, and checks it live against limits for X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, SMS, and SEO meta tags. Paste your text to count characters instantly.
Key takeaways
A character counter is an online tool that counts every character in a piece of text. Unlike a word counter, which groups text into words, a char count tool counts individual units — letters, digits, punctuation, spaces, and symbols — and reports totals with and without whitespace. Writers use a character count online to stay inside hard limits: social media bios, post captions, SMS messages, SEO titles, and meta descriptions all cap characters, not words.
[IMAGE: Annotated screenshot of the character counter with the six stat cards and platform limit bars labeled — alt: "Character counter showing character stats and platform limit bars"]Type or paste text and every metric updates on each keystroke. Here is the exact counting logic:
Below the stats, the platform limits checker draws a live bar for each of seven common limits. The bar stays green up to 80% of the limit, turns amber as you approach it, and red when you exceed it — so you can see at a glance whether a caption or bio still fits.
| Platform | Character limit | What it applies to |
|---|---|---|
| X (Twitter) | 280 | Post text |
| 150 | Profile bio | |
| TikTok | 2,200 | Video caption |
| YouTube | 100 | Video title |
| SMS | 160 | Single text message segment |
| SEO meta title | 60 | Google display guideline |
| SEO meta description | 160 | Google display guideline |
Paste "Hello, World! 123" into the character counter:
| Metric | Result | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Total characters | 17 | Every character including spaces |
| Without spaces | 15 | 17 minus 2 spaces |
| Letters | 10 | H-e-l-l-o + W-o-r-l-d |
| Digits | 3 | 1, 2, 3 |
| Spaces | 2 | Two space characters |
| Special characters | 2 | The comma and exclamation mark |
The 17 characters sit at just 6% of the X/Twitter 280 limit (green bar), but would already exceed a 60-character meta title — the platform bars make that visible instantly.
The two totals answer different questions, and mixing them up causes real mistakes:
When in doubt, use the with-spaces total: it is the stricter number, and every platform limit in the checker below uses it.
This tool measures text the way JavaScript does: in UTF-16 code units. Most everyday characters are one unit, but many emoji (😀, 🎉) are stored as two. So a tweet-length check here may show a slightly higher number than the platform's own counter for emoji-heavy text.
Platforms differ too: X historically counts most emoji as two characters toward its 280 limit, while Instagram counts them as one in the bio field. If your text is emoji-heavy and sits close to a limit, verify against the platform itself — use this tool for the draft, the platform for the final check.
[IMAGE: Diagram comparing how one emoji is counted as 2 code units in JavaScript vs 1 character on some platforms — alt: "Emoji character counting differences between JavaScript and social platforms"]| Tool | Best for | Platform-limit checking? |
|---|---|---|
| This character counter | Character-level stats plus live limit bars, no signup | Yes — 7 platforms |
| Word counter | Word-based limits (essays, articles) with reading time | No |
| Caption length counter | Social caption limits specifically | Yes — caption-focused |
| Platform's own composer | Final verification before posting | Yes — authoritative |
Count words with the word counter, count characters here, and format caption spacing with the caption formatter before you post.
Paste your text into the box and the totals update live — total characters, characters without spaces, letters, digits, spaces, and special characters. There is no button to press and no signup required.
Both. The tool shows total characters (including spaces) and characters without spaces side by side, so you can use whichever number your task requires. The platform-limit bars always use the with-spaces total.
X (Twitter) allows 280 characters per post, so this page doubles as a Twitter character counter: the live 280-character bar shows your draft approaching the limit as you type, turning amber past 80% and red if you exceed it.
150 characters. The platform checker includes an Instagram bio bar that turns amber past 80% (120 characters) and red if you exceed 150.
The tool counts JavaScript UTF-16 code units, and most emoji are stored as two units. Platforms count emoji differently — X has historically counted many as two, Instagram as one — so verify emoji-heavy text against the platform itself.
Yes. Every line break counts as one character in the total and as one whitespace unit in the spaces count. Pasting from Word or web pages can add extra breaks — the total reflects exactly what is in the box.
A character counter counts individual characters (letters, spaces, punctuation); a word counter groups text into whitespace-separated words. Use the word counter for essay and article length, and this tool for bios, captions, SMS, and meta tags.
No. Counting runs entirely in your browser with JavaScript. Nothing is uploaded, stored, or shared.
Anything that is not an A–Z letter, a 0–9 digit, or whitespace: punctuation, emoji, symbols, and accented or non-Latin letters such as é, ñ, or Cyrillic characters.