Character Counter

How to count characters

Type or paste your text into the box.
Read the character count with spaces, and without them, at the top.
Check the meters for X, Instagram, YouTube, meta descriptions and SMS to see how much room is left.

Character limits by platform

Where	Limit	How it's counted
X post	280	Emoji and CJK characters count 2; every link counts 23
Instagram caption	2,200	Also at most 30 hashtags and 20 @ mentions
YouTube title	100	Characters
YouTube description	5,000	Characters
Meta description	No limit	Google cuts snippets to fit the screen, often around 150–160 characters
SMS (standard alphabet)	160 per message	153 per part when split; ^ { } [ ] ~ \ \| € take two
SMS (Unicode)	70 per message	67 per part when split; used when any character is outside the standard alphabet

Limits change, so the sources below link each platform's own documentation. The X and SMS meters follow the published rules but the app or phone network you send from has the final say.

What counts as a character

Every letter, number, space, punctuation mark and line break counts. An emoji or an accented letter counts as one character, the way it looks, even if it's stored as several code points. That's why the count can differ from a programming language's string length, and why X and SMS, which count in their own units, get their own meters.

Counting words instead? The word counter leads with words, sentences and reading time.

Sources

Each link was last checked on 7 October 2026.

Counting characters, X Developer Platform: the 280 limit, with emoji and CJK characters counting 2 and every link 23.
Instagram Platform: IG User Media, Meta for Developers: captions of up to 2,200 characters, 30 hashtags and 20 @ tags.
Edit video settings, YouTube Help: video titles of up to 100 characters and descriptions of up to 5,000.
Control your snippets in search results, Google Search Central: no length limit on meta descriptions; snippets are truncated to fit the device.
TS 23.038: Alphabets and language-specific information, 3GPP: the GSM 7-bit default alphabet and its extension table.
TS 23.040: Technical realization of the Short Message Service (SMS), 3GPP: the 140-byte message body, and the header that joins long messages.

Common uses

Writing a post that fits. Draft an X post or Instagram caption and watch the meters, with X's weighting for links and emoji, before you paste it into the app.
Keeping an SMS to one message. Check a reminder or marketing text against the 160-character limit, and see which character pushed it into the 70-character Unicode mode.
Form fields with a character cap. Application forms, bios and product listings often cap answers by characters. Write here, check the count with and without spaces, and paste it in.

Questions

Do spaces count as characters?

Usually, yes. Most limits, including X posts, Instagram captions and form fields, count spaces and line breaks. The “Without spaces” figure is there for the few places that don't, such as some translation and essay rules.

Why does X count my post differently?

X weights characters: emoji and Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters count as 2, and every link counts as 23, however long it is. The X post meter follows those documented rules; X's own counter is the final word.

Why does one emoji turn my text message into two?

An SMS holds 160 characters from the standard GSM alphabet. One character outside it, such as an emoji or a curly quote, switches the whole message to Unicode, which fits 70. Longer messages are split into parts of 153 or 67.

How are emoji and accented letters counted?

As one character each, as they appear on screen, even when they're built from several code points, like 👍🏽 or a family emoji. Some systems count those differently, which the X and SMS meters take into account.