Character Counter

What is the Character Counter?

The Character Counter is a free tool that counts the characters in your text, with and without spaces, alongside words, sentences, lines and UTF-8 bytes. It checks the count against twelve limits at once, including Google title tags, meta descriptions, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and SMS, so you see which ones the text fits.

How to use the Character Counter

1. Type or paste your text into the box.
2. Read the character count, then the counts without spaces, words, lines and bytes.
3. Scan the limit bars. Amber means within 10% of the limit, rose means over it.
4. Trim until the platform you are writing for shows a violet bar.

Do spaces count as characters?

Yes. Every platform that sets a character limit counts spaces, line breaks and punctuation. The without-spaces figure exists for the few places that ask for it, mostly academic submissions and some translation pricing, so check which one your limit means before you trim.

Why do character counters give different numbers for emoji?

Because an emoji can be one, two or seven code units depending on how it is built. A family emoji is several people joined by invisible characters. This counter counts code points, which is how most platforms count, so most emoji count once.

X is the exception: it counts every emoji as 2 and every link as 23, whatever the link's real length. For an X post, use the Twitter Character Counter, which applies those rules exactly.

What are the character limits for SEO titles and meta descriptions?

Google does not cut titles and descriptions at a character count. It cuts at a width: roughly 600 pixels for a title and 920 pixels for a description on desktop. In practice that is about 60 characters for a title and 155 to 160 for a description, which is what the bars here use.

Wide letters like W and M run out sooner than narrow ones like i and l. To see exactly where Google would cut yours, use the Meta Description Length Checker, which measures the pixels.

Is a character counter the same as a letter counter?

Not quite. A character counter counts everything you can type: letters, digits, spaces, punctuation, line breaks and emoji. A letter counter counts only the letters. The without-spaces figure here is the closer of the two, but it still includes digits and punctuation, so a sentence with a phone number in it shows more than its letters.

For almost every real limit the full count is the one that matters. Social platforms, form fields, SMS and SEO tags all count spaces and punctuation, so trim against the main figure unless the brief says otherwise.

How do I count characters in Word or Google Docs?

In Microsoft Word, open the Review tab and click Word Count. The box shows characters with spaces and characters without spaces, plus words, paragraphs and lines. Select some text first to count only that part.

In Google Docs, press Ctrl+Shift+C (Cmd+Shift+C on Mac) or open Tools, then Word count. It lists characters and characters excluding spaces. Neither app checks your text against platform limits, which is what the bars on this page add. For reading time and a readability score on the same text, use the Word Counter.

What is the UCAS personal statement character limit?

4,000 characters, including spaces. Since the 2026 entry cycle the statement is written as answers to three questions that share that total, and each answer needs at least 350 characters. UCAS sets these figures, so check its current guidance before you submit.

Different counters can disagree by a few characters on line breaks and pasted symbols such as curly quotes. Leave a small margin rather than writing to the last character, and check the count the UCAS form itself shows once you paste the final text in.

How do I count characters in JavaScript?

Use Array.from(text).length or [...text].length, which count code points, the same way this counter does. The obvious text.length counts UTF-16 code units instead, so most emoji and some rare symbols count as 2.

To count what a reader sees as one character, including a family emoji built from several code points or a letter with a separate accent mark, use Intl.Segmenter with granularity: "grapheme" and count the segments. For storage limits, new TextEncoder().encode(text).length gives the UTF-8 byte count shown here.