Character counter
Paste or type your text. Characters, words, sentences and reading time update as you type.
Runs in your browser. What you type is not sent to a server.
- Characters
- 0
- Words
- 0
- Without spaces
- 0
- Sentences
- 0
- Paragraphs
- 0
- Lines
- 0
- Reading time
- 0 sec
- Speaking time
- 0 sec
- Bytes (UTF-8)
- 0
Limits
- X (Twitter) post0 / 280
- SMS text message0 / 160
- Search result description0 / 155 (about)
- YouTube video title0 / 100
- Instagram caption0 / 2,200
- LinkedIn post0 / 3,000
Most used words
- Type some text to see its most used words.
How the counts work
Characters are counted the way you see them on screen, so an emoji like 👍🏽 or an accented letter typed as two code points counts as one. Spaces, line breaks and punctuation all count. "Without spaces" leaves out spaces, tabs and line breaks.
Words are runs of letters or numbers, so "don't" is one word and "2026" is one word, while a dash on its own isn't. Chinese and Japanese text is split into words by your browser's built-in language rules rather than by spaces.
Sentences end at a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark followed by a space, or at a blank line. Abbreviations like "e.g." can add an extra sentence now and then, so treat this number as a close estimate.
Reading time uses 238 words per minute, the average silent reading speed for adults found in a 2019 review of 190 studies by Marc Brysbaert. Speaking time uses 150 words per minute, a typical pace for a talk or presentation.
About the limits
The X bar follows X's own counting rules rather than the plain character count. Latin letters, digits and common punctuation count as one. Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters count as two, each emoji counts as two, and any link counts as 23 however long it is, because X shortens it. An X post holds 280 by that count.
The text message line works out which alphabet your phone will use. In the standard SMS alphabet one message holds 160 characters, and a few symbols such as € and [ take two places. One emoji or a letter outside that alphabet, such as Korean or Cyrillic, switches the whole message to a format that holds 70. Longer messages are sent in parts of 153 or 67 characters, because each part keeps a little room to join them back up.
Search engines don't have a fixed limit for descriptions, but results usually show about 155 characters before cutting off. To test a layout at one of these lengths before the real copy exists, the lorem ipsum generator makes placeholder text of exactly 155, 160 or 280 characters.
Examples
These are the counts this page gives for some short texts, so you can see where the three numbers part ways.
| Text | Characters | X count | Text message |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hello world | 11 | 11 | 11 of 160, 1 message |
| Price is 20€ | 12 | 13 | 13 of 160 (€ takes two) |
| See you at 7 👍 | 14 | 15 | 15 of 70 (the emoji switches the format) |
| Done! 🎉🎉🎉 | 9 | 12 | 12 of 70 |
| 안녕하세요 (Korean, "hello") | 5 | 10 | 5 of 70 |
| Read this + a 50-character link | 60 | 33 | 60 of 160 |
| 161 plain letters | 161 | 161 | 2 messages |
| 150 plain letters, a space and 👍 | 152 | 153 | 3 messages |
The last two rows are the ones that catch people out. A 161-letter message only just spills into a second part. Add one thumbs-up to a 150-letter message and the limit drops from 160 to 70 per message (67 per part once split), so the same text now needs three.
Questions
Why did my text message with one emoji send as three?
An emoji can't be written in the standard SMS alphabet, so the phone switches the whole message to a wider format that fits 70 characters, or 67 per part when split. A 150-letter message with one emoji needs three parts instead of one. Type or paste the message above and the text message line shows how many parts it will take.
Is my text saved or uploaded?
No. Counting happens in your browser and the text is gone when you close the page.
Why does Word or Google Docs show a slightly different word count?
Each program has its own rules for hyphens, numbers and symbols. The difference is usually a word or two in a page of text. If the counts differ because the text itself changed between two drafts, compare text shows exactly which words were added or removed.