Character Counter
Free online character counter tool, count words, lines and bytes
What Does the Character Counter Measure?
This tool counts characters (with and without spaces), words, lines, and bytes of any text. It is essential for meeting character limits on social media posts, form fields, SMS messages, and meta descriptions. The byte count reflects UTF-8 encoding, which is the standard for web content.
Character Limits for Common Platforms
Twitter/X: 280 characters. Instagram caption: 2,200 characters. Facebook post: 63,206 characters. SEO meta title: 50-60 characters. SEO meta description: 150-160 characters. SMS: 160 characters. Email subject: 78 characters recommended.
▶What is the difference between characters and bytes?
Characters are the visible text units. Bytes are the storage units in UTF-8 encoding. ASCII characters use 1 byte each, but non-Latin characters (Chinese, emoji) use 2-4 bytes each.
▶How are words counted?
Words are counted by splitting on whitespace. Consecutive whitespace is treated as a single separator. This method works well for English and most Latin-based languages.
▶How are CJK characters counted?
For Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text without spaces, each character is counted individually. Words may not be split accurately since CJK languages do not use spaces between words.