Character Counter

How do I count characters in my text?

1. Paste or type your text into the Input box.
2. Read the live totals: characters with spaces, characters without spaces, words and lines.
3. Click Count characters to refresh the figures after a big paste or edit.
4. Compare the total with the limit you are writing for, such as 280 for X or 155 for a meta description.
5. Trim your text in the Input box until it fits, then click Copy output.

Character limits are everywhere and most of them are strict. X (formerly Twitter) allows 280 characters per post. A standard SMS is 160 characters, but drops to 70 as soon as you include an emoji or any character outside the basic GSM alphabet, which is why one text message with a single emoji can be billed as two. Instagram captions allow 2,200 characters and LinkedIn posts 3,000, though both truncate what shows before a "more" link at far fewer.

For SEO work, the counts that matter are the title tag at about 60 characters and the meta description at about 155. Google measures these in pixels rather than characters, so a title full of wide letters like W and M can be cut short at 55 while one of narrow letters survives at 65. Treat 60 and 155 as safe working limits and check the with-spaces figure, because spaces take up width too.

The counter shows characters both with and without spaces because different forms ask for different things: UCAS and most job application portals count spaces, while some competition entry rules do not. Lines are counted from line breaks, so a paragraph that wraps on screen still counts as one line. Words are whitespace-separated, matching Word and Google Docs.

One thing to know about emoji and some symbols: JavaScript, like many platforms, stores text as UTF-16, so a single emoji can be counted as 2 characters, and flag emoji or skin-tone variants as 4 or more. X counts most emoji as 2, and SMS gateways count them differently again, so leave a little room if your message contains several. Everything here runs in your browser tab; the text is never transmitted or stored.

How it works: this tool uses plain JavaScript running in your browser tab. No server is involved, so Kilnfile never sees your file. Last reviewed 20 September 2026.

Frequently asked questions