Character Counter – Count Letters, Digits & Special Characters
Count total characters, letters, digits, spaces, and special characters in any text. Ideal for social media, SMS, and meta tag limits.
Limit:
0 / 280 280 remaining
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Total characters
0
Letters only
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Digits only
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Spaces
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Special characters
1
Lines
Platform Character Limits
Knowing the character limit for your target platform helps you craft messages that fit without truncation. Here are the most common limits:
| Platform | Character Limit |
|---|---|
| Twitter/X | 280 |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 |
| Facebook post | 63,206 |
| Meta description | 155–160 |
| Page title (SEO) | 50–60 |
| SMS | 160 (GSM-7) |
| WhatsApp message | 65,536 |
Why Character Count Matters for SEO
Search engines display meta titles and descriptions in results pages with a pixel-width cap, not a strict character limit. However, 50–60 characters for titles and 155–160 characters for descriptions are reliable targets that keep content visible without truncation on desktop and mobile. Going over these limits doesn't penalise your ranking, but the text will be cut off in search results, which can hurt click-through rates.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the difference between character count and word count? +
Character count measures every individual symbol including spaces and punctuation. Word count measures distinct tokens separated by whitespace. Character count matters for platforms with character limits (Twitter: 280, SMS: 160, meta description: 160).
Does this count Unicode characters correctly? +
Yes — the counter uses JavaScript's native string length which handles most Unicode correctly. However, some emoji are represented as multiple Unicode code points (surrogate pairs) and may count as 2 characters. This matches how most platforms (including Twitter) count emoji.
How many characters is a standard SMS? +
A standard SMS is 160 characters when using the GSM-7 character set (basic Latin letters, numbers, punctuation). If you include any Unicode character (accents, emoji, Arabic, Chinese), the limit drops to 70 characters per segment. Messages over the limit are sent as multiple segments.