Most places you type into have a hard limit. A post on X stops at 280 characters, an SMS splits into a second message after 160, a meta description is usually trimmed somewhere around 155 to 160 characters in search results, and a database column might accept 255 and not one more. Going over by a few characters means a truncated sentence, an extra message charge or an error.
Type or paste your text below and six counts update as you go: characters, characters without spaces, bytes in UTF-8, lines, spaces and breaks, and Unicode code points. The counting happens on your own device, so drafts, passwords and private messages never leave the page.
Why "one character" can mean different things
To a reader, an emoji like a thumbs up with a skin tone, a flag or an accented letter is one character. To a computer it may be several pieces. The flag of Saudi Arabia is two Unicode code points, the family emoji made of a man, a woman and a girl is five code points joined together, and that same family takes 18 bytes once saved as UTF-8. Simple counters that use a programming language's length function would report 8 for that family, which matches neither what you see nor what is stored.
This counter shows the numbers that matter in practice. Characters counts what you see on screen, which is what most modern apps mean by length. Bytes (UTF-8) is the size of the text in a file or database: plain English letters take one byte, accented Latin, Arabic and Hebrew letters two, most Chinese and Japanese characters three, and emoji four or more.
Where an exact character count matters
Social posts and profile bios
Platforms cap posts, bios, captions and usernames. Instagram bios, for example, have long been limited to 150 characters. Check the count before posting so a closing call to action is not cut off.
SEO titles and meta descriptions
Search engines truncate titles at roughly 50 to 60 characters and descriptions at about 155 to 160, depending on pixel width. Writing to those lengths keeps your message whole on the results page.
SMS and push notifications
A standard text message holds 160 plain Latin characters, but a single emoji or Arabic letter switches the message to an encoding that holds only 70. Seeing characters and bytes side by side helps you notice when a message is about to split.
Developers checking field limits
Database columns, form validators and API fields limit either characters or bytes. The bytes count tells you whether a name with accents or emoji still fits a VARCHAR or a byte-limited key.
What each number counts
Characters uses your browser's built-in Unicode segmenter to split the text into grapheme clusters, so a letter with a combining accent, a flag or a joined emoji sequence counts as one. Without spaces subtracts every whitespace character, including tabs and line breaks. Spaces and breaks is that subtracted amount on its own.
Lines counts every line, including empty ones, and treats Windows, Mac and Unix line endings alike. Code points counts the individual Unicode values, which some APIs and older systems use as their measure. Everything recalculates while you type, and the Clear button empties the box in one click.
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- Click into the Your text box and type, or paste text copied from anywhere.
- Read the Characters total for what readers will see, or Without spaces if your limit excludes spaces.
- Check Bytes (UTF-8) when the limit applies to storage, URLs or SMS encoding.
- Edit the text in place and watch the counts change until it fits, then copy it back to where you need it.
Things to keep in mind
- Each platform counts slightly differently. X, for instance, counts every link as 23 characters and some scripts and emoji as two, so its meter can differ from the Characters figure here.
- Grapheme rules depend on your browser's Unicode version. A brand-new emoji may be counted as several characters on an older browser.
- Bytes are measured in UTF-8 only. Systems that store text as UTF-16 or a legacy code page use a different number of bytes.
- There is no target limit or warning colour; compare the counts with your limit yourself.