Character Counter
Count characters the way people see them, check bytes and code points, and see at a glance whether your post, title or text message fits the limit.
122 characters
Counts
Platform limits
- X (Twitter) post122 / 280 158 left
X counts emoji and some scripts as 2 and every link as 23
- Google title122 / 60 62 over
About 60; Google actually cuts by pixel width
- Meta description122 / 160 38 left
About 155 to 160 before Google shortens it
- Instagram caption122 / 2,200 2,078 left
- YouTube title122 / 100 22 over
- YouTube description122 / 5,000 4,878 left
- LinkedIn post122 / 3,000 2,878 left
SMS text message
At least one character is outside the GSM-7 alphabet, so the whole message switches to UCS-2: 70 per message, or 67 per part when it's split. Emoji take 2 units each.
Characters forcing UCS-2
Counts what you see
Emoji, flags and accented letters count as one character.
Real SMS maths
GSM-7 and UCS-2 detection with 153 and 67 character parts.
Stays on your device
Nothing you type is sent to us or saved anywhere.
One box, every limit
Writing for a platform with a hard limit gets tedious fast. You draft a post, paste it somewhere to count it, trim a word, paste again. Here the text box sits next to a list of common limits, each with a bar that fills as you type. It turns amber in the last 10% and red once you're over, with the exact number of characters to cut.
The main count treats every visible character as one. That matters with emoji: 👍🏽 is two Unicode code points and 8 bytes, but on screen it's a single character, and that's what you get. Bytes and code points are shown separately for developers checking a database column or an API limit.
Text messages get their own panel because they don't follow the simple rule. A single SMS holds 160 characters, but only if every character is in the GSM-7 alphabet. Add one emoji or a curly quote and the whole message switches to UCS-2, which fits 70.
How to use it
- 1Type or paste your text.
- 2Watch the platform bars on the right. Red means trim.
- 3For a text message, check the encoding and how many messages it will be sent as.
- 4If the SMS panel lists characters forcing UCS-2, replace them (curly quotes with straight ones, for example) to get back to 160.
The limits shown
Platforms change their limits from time to time. These were the published figures when we built the tool.
- X (Twitter) post: 280. X weighs emoji and Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters as 2 and every link as 23, so treat our bar as a close guide for plain text.
- Google title: about 60. Google really cuts titles by pixel width (around 600 px), so a title full of wide letters like W and M gets cut sooner.
- Meta description: about 155 to 160. The bar uses 160; Google may show more or less depending on the device.
- Instagram caption: 2,200. YouTube title: 100. YouTube description: 5,000. LinkedIn post: 3,000.
How SMS segments are counted
With GSM-7, one message carries 160 characters. A longer text is split into parts of 153, because each part needs a small header so the phone can join them back together. A 200 character text is therefore 2 messages, and 307 characters is 3.
A few characters (€ [ ] { } ^ ~ | and the backslash) are in GSM-7's extension table and take two slots each. Anything outside GSM-7, including emoji, curly quotes, Cyrillic, Arabic and accented letters missing from the set (á, í, ó, ú, ê and a lower-case ç, for example), switches the whole message to UCS-2: 70 per message, 67 per part. An emoji takes two of those units.
The counter never splits a two-slot character across two parts, the same way phones handle it, so the part count matches what your carrier bills.
Characters, code points and bytes
Characters is what you'd count with your finger on the screen. Code points is how many Unicode values the text holds; é typed as e plus an accent is two. UTF-8 bytes is the size on disk or over the wire: 1 byte for plain English letters, 2 for é or ü, 3 for most Chinese characters and 4 for emoji.
If a database column is VARCHAR(255) in MySQL with utf8mb4, the limit is in characters. If a system says "255 bytes", look at the bytes figure instead.
Trimming a post to fit
Start with the easy cuts: double spaces, "very" and "really", and a sign-off nobody reads. Numbers save room too, so "ten" becomes "10". On X, a link costs 23 characters however long it is, so shortening the address won't help there.
For SMS campaigns the cheapest fix is often the encoding. One stray emoji or curly apostrophe can turn a 150 character message from one part into three, and most providers bill per part.
Related tools
What Our Users Say
Real feedback from people using WeblixTools, checked by our team before it appears.
5.0 out of 5 · 1 review
very nice
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my message only fit 70 characters?
At least one character isn't in the GSM-7 alphabet, so the message is sent as UCS-2. The panel lists the culprits. Curly quotes and apostrophes from a word processor are a common cause; straight ones fix it.
Do spaces count as characters?
Yes, on every platform listed. The "No spaces" figure is there for forms and assignments that ask for a count without them.
Is the X count exactly what X will show?
For plain English text without links, yes. X counts each link as 23 characters whatever its length, and counts emoji and CJK characters as 2, so posts with those will differ a little.
Why is the title limit only "about" 60?
Google cuts titles by width on the screen, not by a character count. Sixty characters is a safe rule of thumb. To see exactly where a title breaks, try the SERP Snippet Preview.
What's the difference between characters and bytes?
Characters are what you see. Bytes are how much space the text takes when stored as UTF-8. English letters are 1 byte each, but an emoji is 4 and 👍🏽 is 8.
Does the € sign really count twice in an SMS?
Yes. It's in the GSM-7 extension table, so it's sent as an escape code plus the character. The same goes for [ ] { } ^ ~ | and the backslash.
Why are there more code points than characters?
Some characters are built from several code points. 👍🏽 is a thumb plus a skin tone, 🇬🇧 is two regional letters, and an accent can be stored separately from its letter. You see one character; the computer stores two or more.
Is my text kept anywhere?
No. The counting runs in your browser and the text never leaves your device.