Character Counter
Count characters with and without spaces, plus words and UTF-8 bytes, and check the total against tweet, meta description and title limits.
How to use it
- Type or paste your text — every count updates instantly.
- The limit bars turn red and tell you how far over you are.
- Byte count matters for anything with a storage or SMS limit.
Examples
| “Hello world” | 11 characters, 10 without spaces |
Type or paste text and this counts characters with and without spaces, words, and UTF-8 bytes, all updating live as you type. It exists for the everyday moment where a platform imposes a hard limit and you need to know, before you hit submit, whether you are under it.
Common limits to check against
| Context | Typical limit |
|---|---|
| Tweet / X post | 280 characters |
| SMS (single segment) | 160 characters (70 if it contains non-Latin characters) |
| Meta description | ~150–160 characters |
| Title tag | ~50–60 characters |
| Meta title (pixel-based) | ~600 px, roughly 60 characters |
Why byte count and character count differ
A character count treats every letter, digit or emoji as one unit, but UTF-8 — the encoding almost the entire web uses — represents most characters outside basic Latin using more than one byte. An accented letter like é typically takes two bytes, and many emoji take four, so a message that looks short in character count can be considerably larger in the bytes actually stored or transmitted, which is what SMS segment limits and some database column limits are really measuring.
Meta description length
The commonly cited 150–160 character guideline for meta descriptions is a proxy, not the real rule — Google truncates search snippets by pixel width, not character count, so a description full of wide characters (capital letters, W, M) can truncate earlier than one full of narrow characters (i, l, punctuation) at the same character count. Treat 160 as a safe upper bound and put the most important words near the start so truncation does not cut off anything essential.
Questions people ask
Why is the byte count higher than the character count?
Because UTF-8 uses more than one byte for anything outside basic Latin. An emoji can take four bytes, and accented letters take two.
What is the ideal meta description length?
Around 150 to 160 characters. Google truncates by pixel width rather than character count, so treat 160 as a guide and put the important words first.
Is anything uploaded or stored on a server?
No. Everything runs in your browser. Anything that persists is kept in this browser's local storage on your own device.
Last updated 22 August 2026