Character Counter
Live character count with progress bars for every major social media platform, SEO meta tags, and SMS limits. Paste your text and see which platforms it fits. 100% browser-based.
📱 Social Media
🔍 SEO
💬 Messaging & Ads
📝 What This Tool Does
A free online character counter that shows live counts and progress bars for every major social media platform, SEO meta tag, SMS, and advertising platform. Paste or type your text and instantly see which platforms it fits — with color-coded warnings when you're approaching or exceeding each limit.
Perfect for social media managers writing posts that need to fit multiple platforms, SEO specialists optimizing meta tags, copywriters crafting ad headlines, and anyone who needs to know exactly how many characters their text uses.
📱 Character Limits Reference
| Platform | Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| X / Twitter post | 280 | Premium users: 25,000 |
| X / Twitter bio | 160 | Profile description |
| Instagram bio | 150 | Profile description |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 | Hashtags count toward this |
| Facebook post | 63,206 | Practically unlimited |
| Facebook ad headline | 40 | Sponsored content |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 | Long-form updates |
| LinkedIn headline | 220 | Profile tagline |
| TikTok caption | 2,200 | Video description |
| YouTube title | 100 | Video title |
| YouTube description | 5,000 | Full description box |
| Pinterest description | 500 | Pin description |
| SEO title tag | 60 | Google truncates ~60 chars |
| SEO meta description | 160 | Google truncates ~160 chars |
| SMS (GSM-7) | 160 | Standard Latin chars |
| SMS (Unicode) | 70 | With emoji or non-Latin |
| Google Ad headline | 30 | Each of 3 headlines |
| Google Ad description | 90 | Each of 2 descriptions |
🎯 Common Use Cases
📣 Social media posts
Write once, check limits across Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Facebook at the same time. No more copy-pasting into 5 different tools.
🔍 SEO meta tags
Write title tags (≤60 chars) and meta descriptions (≤160 chars) that won't be truncated by Google. Color-coded warnings when you're over.
💬 SMS campaigns
Keep bulk SMS under 160 characters to avoid splitting into multiple billed messages. Unicode characters drop the limit to 70.
📢 Google Ads
Fit headlines in 30 characters and descriptions in 90. This tool counts exactly so you can see if your ad copy works before pasting into Google Ads.
🔒 Privacy
- ✓ All counting runs in your browser using JavaScript
- ✓ Your text is never sent, stored, or logged anywhere
- ✓ Works offline after the page first loads
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Twitter/X character limit?
X (formerly Twitter) has a 280 character limit for standard posts. X Premium subscribers can post up to 25,000 characters. Bio has a 160 character limit. URLs count as 23 characters regardless of actual length. Emoji count as 2 characters each.
What is the Instagram character limit?
Instagram bio: 150 characters. Instagram caption: 2,200 characters. Instagram story text: 2,200 characters. Instagram comment: 2,200 characters. Hashtags count toward the caption limit, and you can use up to 30 hashtags per post.
What is the Facebook character limit?
Facebook post: 63,206 characters (practically unlimited for status updates). Facebook ads: 125 characters primary text, 40 characters headline. Facebook comment: 8,000 characters. Profile bio: 101 characters.
What is the ideal SEO meta description length?
Google displays approximately 155-160 characters of meta description in desktop search results, and about 120 characters on mobile. Aim for 150-155 characters maximum to avoid truncation. The meta title tag should be 50-60 characters to avoid being cut off with an ellipsis.
How many characters is one SMS?
A standard SMS is 160 characters (using GSM-7 encoding). Messages longer than 160 characters are split into multiple SMS messages of 153 characters each (7 characters are used for segmentation metadata). Unicode messages (with emoji or non-Latin characters) are limited to 70 characters per SMS.
Does this counter count spaces?
Yes, and we show both: "Characters" (including spaces and punctuation) and "Characters (no spaces)" separately. Most social media platforms count WITH spaces. SMS also counts with spaces. SEO meta tags count with spaces.
How are emojis counted?
This tool counts emojis as 1 character in the display counts. But warning: Twitter/X counts most emojis as 2 characters, SMS counts emojis as 2 characters in UTF-16 encoding, and databases often count them as 4 bytes. For platform-specific accuracy, check the "bytes" count for the true storage cost.
Is my text private?
Yes. All counting happens in your browser using JavaScript. Your text is never sent, stored, or logged. Close the tab and it is gone.