Free Character Counter: Count Words, Sentences & More
Whether you're writing a tweet, an essay, or an SEO meta description, knowing your exact character and word count matters. Our real-time counter makes it easy.
Count characters instantly
Real-time counting as you type or paste.
Why Character Counting Matters
Many platforms and formats impose strict character or word limits:
- Twitter/X — 280 characters per tweet. Every character counts.
- SEO meta descriptions — Google displays ~155–160 characters. Go over and your text gets truncated.
- SEO title tags — Keep under 60 characters for full display in search results.
- SMS messages — Standard SMS is 160 characters. Exceeding this sends multiple messages.
- Academic essays — Assignments often specify 500, 1000, or 2500 word limits.
- Ad copy — Google Ads headlines: 30 chars. Descriptions: 90 chars. Facebook ads: 125 chars primary text.
- Instagram captions — 2,200 character limit.
What Our Tool Counts
- Characters — Total count including spaces (and without spaces).
- Words — Accurate count for English, Chinese, Japanese, and mixed-language text.
- Sentences — Detected by punctuation marks (periods, question marks, exclamation marks).
- Paragraphs — Separated by line breaks.
- Reading time — Estimated based on average reading speed (200–250 words per minute).
How to Use
- Open the Character Counter tool
- Type or paste your text
- All counts update instantly in real time
- No button to click — it's always counting
Pro tip: Bookmark the tool for quick access. It's perfect for checking tweet lengths, meta descriptions, and ad copy before publishing.
Character Count Cheat Sheet
- Twitter/X post: 280 characters
- Google meta description: 155–160 characters
- Google title tag: 50–60 characters
- Facebook post: 63,206 characters (but optimal is 40–80)
- Instagram caption: 2,200 characters
- LinkedIn post: 3,000 characters
- YouTube title: 100 characters (display ~70)
- SMS: 160 characters per segment
Multi-Language Support
Our counter correctly handles Chinese characters, Japanese kanji and kana, Korean hangul, and emoji. Each CJK character is counted as one character. Mixed English-Chinese text is counted accurately for both character and word metrics.
Privacy
All counting happens locally in your browser. Your text is never sent to any server. Type confidently — your content stays private.