How to use the Character Counter
- Paste or type your text into the box. All counts update in real time.
- Check the summary row — total characters, no-spaces count, letters-and-digits count, and UTF-8 byte size.
- Read the breakdown — the stacked bar and legend show what proportion of your text is letters, digits, spaces, punctuation, emoji, and other characters.
- See character frequency — the most-used characters appear below with their count.
- Check platform limits — progress bars show how close you are to Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook limits.
Characters vs bytes — why it matters
A character and a byte are not the same thing. In UTF-8 encoding (used by virtually all modern web applications), a standard ASCII character takes 1 byte, an accented character like é takes 2 bytes, and most emoji take 4 bytes.
ASCII (a–z, 0–9)
1 byte / char
"hello" = 5 bytes
Accented (é, ü, ñ)
2 bytes / char
"café" = 5 bytes, 4 chars
Emoji (👋, 🎉)
4 bytes / char
"hi 👋" = 7 bytes, 4 chars
Databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL often have byte-based column limits (e.g. VARCHAR(255) = 255 bytes, not 255 characters). If your text contains emoji or non-ASCII characters, always check the byte count — not just the character count.
Character limit quick reference
Twitter / X
280 characters
URLs count as 23 chars regardless of length
LinkedIn post
3,000 characters
Posts over 210 chars are truncated with "see more"
LinkedIn headline
220 characters
Search results often show only the first 120
Instagram caption
2,200 characters
First 125 chars show before "more" is clicked
SMS (GSM-7)
160 characters
Longer messages split into segments; each costs more
Email subject line
50–60 characters
Mobile clients typically show 30–40 chars