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A plain, focused character count — paste or type any text and get an exact character total, both including and excluding spaces, useful for meeting a strict character limit imposed by a form field, a social post, a meta description, or an SMS message. Character limits show up constantly in everyday writing tasks, and they're rarely forgiving: a tweet cut off mid-sentence, a meta description truncated by Google, or an SMS silently split into two billed segments because it ran one character over. Rather than eyeballing a word count and guessing whether you're under a limit, a dedicated character counter gives you the exact number instantly, as you type or paste. This tool reports both the count including spaces and the count excluding them, since different platforms and forms specify their limits differently, and it's built to handle Unicode text correctly rather than miscounting emoji or accented letters.
How it works
The text is counted character by character using multi-byte-safe counting, meaning each visible character — including accented letters like é, symbols, and emoji — is counted as a single character rather than being split into the multiple underlying bytes it may occupy in UTF-8. The tool reports two totals: the full character count including every space, and a second count with spaces removed, so you can check your text against whichever definition of "character limit" the platform you're targeting actually uses.
- Enter text.
- Click Calculate to see your results.
Examples
Checking an SMS limit
A single GSM-encoded SMS segment allows up to 160 characters — paste your draft message here to confirm it fits before sending, since going one character over silently splits it into two billed segments.
Checking a meta description
Google typically displays up to around 155-160 characters of a meta description before truncating it with an ellipsis — pasting your draft here confirms whether it fits before you publish.
Comparing counts with and without spaces
The text "Hello World" is 11 characters including the space and 10 characters without it — a small difference that matters if a platform's stated limit excludes spaces specifically.
Who should use it
- Meeting a social media or SMS character limit.
- Checking a form field's max-length requirement before submitting.
- Checking a meta title or meta description length before publishing a page.
Industry applications
- Social media management
- SMS/marketing campaigns
- Form and UX design
- SEO and content publishing
Advantages
- Instant, exact character count.
- Multi-byte/Unicode safe, so emoji and accented letters count correctly.
- Shows both with-spaces and without-spaces totals at once.
Limitations
- Doesn't report word count or reading time — use the Word Counter for that.
- Doesn't account for platform-specific quirks like link-shortening character counting.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Forgetting that a platform's stated character limit may count with spaces or a specific encoding — check its documentation if the numbers seem off.
- Assuming a "160-character" SMS limit always applies — messages containing certain Unicode characters can drop the effective limit to 70 characters per segment.
- Not accounting for URLs or hashtags, which some platforms count as a fixed length regardless of their actual character count.
Best practices
- Check both the with-spaces and without-spaces counts if you're not sure which one a platform enforces.
- Leave a small buffer under the stated limit rather than targeting the exact maximum, since some platforms append extra characters (like a link or "…") automatically.
- For meta descriptions, aim for roughly 150-160 characters rather than the theoretical maximum, since Google's truncation point can vary by search result and device.
Tips
- Need a word/sentence breakdown too? Use the Word Counter instead.
- Paste your text as you draft it rather than only checking at the end, so you catch an overage early.