How are emoji counted?

As one character each, because that is what you see. A family emoji is built from four people joined by zero-width joiners: seven code points, eleven UTF-16 units and twenty-five UTF-8 bytes, but one character on the screen and one in this count. The UTF-16 and UTF-8 figures are shown on their own lines, because a platform limit or a database column will usually be counting one of those instead.

What is the character limit for a post on X?

280, but X does not count characters the way a text editor does. Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic and general punctuation count 1 each; Chinese, Japanese, Korean and emoji count 2. Any link counts 23 no matter how long the URL is, because X replaces it with a t.co address. Track the X limit here and the remaining figure uses that weighting, so a post full of CJK runs out at roughly 140 characters rather than 280.

How many characters fit in one SMS?

160 if every character is in the GSM-7 alphabet, and 70 as soon as one character is not, because a single emoji or curly quote switches the whole message to UCS-2. Longer messages are split into parts of 153 or 67, since each part gives up some room to the header that reassembles them. The tool detects which encoding your text forces, counts the parts, and shows how much space is left in the part you are writing.

How long should a meta description be?

The SEO preset compares a draft with 160 characters, and its title-tag mode uses 60 characters. These are drafting guides, not search-engine limits. Google can rewrite a title or snippet, and displayed length depends on pixel width, device and search context. This counter does not measure pixels or guarantee that text will appear in full.

How does the word count handle hyphens and Chinese?

Words are found with Unicode word-breaking rules. This counter joins hyphenated forms such as state-of-the-art into one word; another editor may choose a different convention. In a modern browser, a word segmenter identifies words in Chinese and Japanese text without relying on spaces. The older-browser fallback has no dictionary and approximates one word per Chinese character.

Is my text uploaded anywhere?

No. The counting runs in the page itself, so a draft, a client brief or an unpublished post never leaves your machine, and there is no size limit imposed on what you paste. A draft of up to 50,000 UTF-16 units, the figure the tool shows on its own line, is kept in this browser's own storage so it is still there when you come back; anything longer is counted in full but not saved. Clearing the box with the Clear button clears the saved copy too.

Does the character count include spaces and punctuation?

Characters includes visible characters, spaces and punctuation. The separate Without spaces figure excludes whitespace, including spaces, tabs and line breaks; it still includes punctuation and emoji. Neither figure is the same as UTF-8 bytes or JavaScript string length, which are shown separately.

Can I count how often each letter or word appears?

The frequency section shows the 100 most frequent letters or characters, with counts and percentages. Letters only combines uppercase and lowercase and excludes digits, punctuation and whitespace. All characters keeps those symbols and preserves case; spaces, tabs and newlines have visible labels. Sort by frequency or character order. The word table shows the ten most frequent words after common English stop words are removed, along with each word’s share of the total word count. Use Keyword Density Checker for a longer word list, two- or three-word phrases and a focus-phrase count.

Can I count Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish or Arabic text?

Yes. Paste the text to see its visible-character count, code points, UTF-16 units and UTF-8 bytes. Word boundaries depend on Unicode segmentation and can differ from an assignment or publisher’s convention, especially in languages without spaces. The counter does not translate text or count the strokes inside a Chinese character.

Can I use this for an essay, book or personal statement?

Yes, if you paste the text you want counted. Sentences, paragraphs, lines, unique words and estimated reading or speaking time appear alongside the totals. Count the final text required by the recipient: this tool does not automatically remove citations, footnotes or a bibliography, and it does not grade writing or detect AI authorship.

What is the difference between lines, paragraphs and characters per line?

Lines counts line breaks in the pasted text, including an empty line at the end. Paragraphs counts nonempty blocks separated by blank lines. The tool gives a total character count and a total line count; it does not report a separate length for every line or include visual wrapping as a new line.

Can I upload a PDF, Word document, picture or website URL?

This counter accepts plain text in its text box. For a PDF with selectable text, use PDF Word Counter to count words and characters per page directly. Copy readable text from other documents and paste it here; a scanned image needs text extraction first. Pasting a URL counts the URL itself, not the website’s contents. There is no PDF, Word, image or webpage importer in this tool.

How are reading time and speaking time estimated?

Reading time divides the word count by 238 words per minute; speaking time uses 150 words per minute. Both are rough pace estimates for the pasted text, not a stopwatch or measured typing speed. Use Reading Time Calculator for a dedicated reading-time workflow and Typing Test to measure words per minute while you type.

Can I compare text with a 140, 150 or 160 character limit?

Use the Characters figure and compare it with the limit you need. The number of visible characters is separate from whitespace-free characters, UTF-16 units and bytes, so use the unit the recipient specifies. The ordinary X preset uses 280 weighted characters, and the SMS preset uses encoding rules; neither is a general-purpose 140- or 150-character limit.

Can I count unique letters and unique characters?

Yes. Every count includes a letter total, unique letters, unique characters and unique words. Unique letters combines case and equivalent accented forms. Unique characters counts distinct literal Unicode grapheme clusters, preserving case and whitespace, so A and a are different entries. The totals include every distinct entry even when the frequency list is limited to the 100 most frequent.

Character and Word Counter

Paste text to count visible characters, characters without whitespace, words, sentences, paragraphs and lines. UTF-16 units, code points and UTF-8 bytes are listed separately so an emoji is not confused with a byte count. Review unique words, common words and letter frequency, or choose a preset for an X post, an SMS, an Instagram caption, a LinkedIn post or SEO copy. X and SMS use their own length rules; the other presets are visible-character drafting guides.

your text0 characters

counts0 words

0characters, 0 without spaces

Words: 0
Sentences: 0
Paragraphs: 0
Lines: 0
UTF-16 units: 0
UTF-8 bytes: 0
Reading: 0 sec
Speaking: 0 sec

Limit
Remaining: No limit chosen

What a character is here. Characters are counted as visible Unicode grapheme clusters, with UTF-16 units, code points and UTF-8 bytes shown separately. X uses weighted length and SMS uses encoding-based segments. Other preset limits are visible-character drafting guides; the destination platform decides what fits.

Every count

The rule each figure was counted by, so you can tell which one a platform means.

CharactersGrapheme clusters: the characters you see
0
Without spacesSpaces, tabs and line breaks dropped
0
WordsSegmented by Unicode word rules, hyphenated words count once
0
LettersLetter graphemes only; no numbers, punctuation or spaces
0
Unique lettersDistinct letters, normalized and ignoring case
0
Unique charactersDistinct literal grapheme clusters, including case and whitespace
0
Unique wordsDistinct words, ignoring case
0
SentencesSplit on . ! ? and their CJK forms, skipping common abbreviations
0
ParagraphsBlocks separated by a blank line
0
LinesEvery line break, whatever the ending
0
UTF-16 unitsJavaScript string length; an astral emoji uses two units
0
UTF-8 bytesLength when the text is encoded as UTF-8
0
Code pointsUnicode code points; a visible character can contain several
0
Average word lengthCharacters per word
0
Longest wordMeasured in characters
None yet
Reading time238 words a minute, the measured adult silent average
0 sec
Speaking time150 words a minute, a usual presentation pace
0 sec

Preset limits

X uses weighted length and SMS uses encoding-based segments. The other presets compare visible characters with a drafting limit; the destination may count differently. Track one to see the room left under that check.

X postLatin counts 1, CJK and emoji count 2, and any link would count 23.
280 left, 0 of 280 weighted characters
Instagram captionA visible-character drafting guide for captions, including hashtags and @mentions. Instagram may count some Unicode text differently.
2,200 left, 0 of 2,200 characters
SMS messageGSM-7, one message. 160 septets left in the current segment.
160 left, 0 of 160 septets
Meta descriptionA 160-character drafting guide. Google chooses and truncates snippets by context and pixel width; this is not a pixel measurement.
160 left, 0 of 160 characters
Title tagA 60-character drafting guide. Search-result titles depend on pixel width and may be rewritten by Google.
60 left, 0 of 60 characters
LinkedIn postA visible-character drafting guide for posts. LinkedIn may count some Unicode text differently; this does not check profile fields.
3,000 left, 0 of 3,000 characters

Keyword density

The words used most, as a share of every word in the text. A short list of stop words such as the, and, of and to is left out, so the terms you are actually writing about come to the top.

Write a sentence or two and the words you lean on most appear here.

Character and letter frequency

The 100 most frequent entries, with counts and percentages. Letters are normalized and folded to lower case; All characters keeps case, emoji, digits, punctuation and whitespace. Character order preserves case in All characters mode.

Count Sort

No letters yet.

Nothing you paste leaves this tab. The counting runs in the page itself, so a draft, a client brief or an unpublished post is only ever on your machine. There is no size limit either: the practical ceiling is your own memory.

Common questions

How are emoji counted?: As one character each, because that is what you see. A family emoji is built from four people joined by zero-width joiners: seven code points, eleven UTF-16 units and twenty-five UTF-8 bytes, but one character on the screen and one in this count. The UTF-16 and UTF-8 figures are shown on their own lines, because a platform limit or a database column will usually be counting one of those instead.
What is the character limit for a post on X?: 280, but X does not count characters the way a text editor does. Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic and general punctuation count 1 each; Chinese, Japanese, Korean and emoji count 2. Any link counts 23 no matter how long the URL is, because X replaces it with a t.co address. Track the X limit here and the remaining figure uses that weighting, so a post full of CJK runs out at roughly 140 characters rather than 280.
How many characters fit in one SMS?: 160 if every character is in the GSM-7 alphabet, and 70 as soon as one character is not, because a single emoji or curly quote switches the whole message to UCS-2. Longer messages are split into parts of 153 or 67, since each part gives up some room to the header that reassembles them. The tool detects which encoding your text forces, counts the parts, and shows how much space is left in the part you are writing.
How long should a meta description be?: The SEO preset compares a draft with 160 characters, and its title-tag mode uses 60 characters. These are drafting guides, not search-engine limits. Google can rewrite a title or snippet, and displayed length depends on pixel width, device and search context. This counter does not measure pixels or guarantee that text will appear in full.
How does the word count handle hyphens and Chinese?: Words are found with Unicode word-breaking rules. This counter joins hyphenated forms such as state-of-the-art into one word; another editor may choose a different convention. In a modern browser, a word segmenter identifies words in Chinese and Japanese text without relying on spaces. The older-browser fallback has no dictionary and approximates one word per Chinese character.
Is my text uploaded anywhere?: No. The counting runs in the page itself, so a draft, a client brief or an unpublished post never leaves your machine, and there is no size limit imposed on what you paste. A draft of up to 50,000 UTF-16 units, the figure the tool shows on its own line, is kept in this browser's own storage so it is still there when you come back; anything longer is counted in full but not saved. Clearing the box with the Clear button clears the saved copy too.
Does the character count include spaces and punctuation?: Characters includes visible characters, spaces and punctuation. The separate Without spaces figure excludes whitespace, including spaces, tabs and line breaks; it still includes punctuation and emoji. Neither figure is the same as UTF-8 bytes or JavaScript string length, which are shown separately.
Can I count how often each letter or word appears?: The frequency section shows the 100 most frequent letters or characters, with counts and percentages. Letters only combines uppercase and lowercase and excludes digits, punctuation and whitespace. All characters keeps those symbols and preserves case; spaces, tabs and newlines have visible labels. Sort by frequency or character order. The word table shows the ten most frequent words after common English stop words are removed, along with each word’s share of the total word count. Use Keyword Density Checker for a longer word list, two- or three-word phrases and a focus-phrase count.
Can I count Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish or Arabic text?: Yes. Paste the text to see its visible-character count, code points, UTF-16 units and UTF-8 bytes. Word boundaries depend on Unicode segmentation and can differ from an assignment or publisher’s convention, especially in languages without spaces. The counter does not translate text or count the strokes inside a Chinese character.
Can I use this for an essay, book or personal statement?: Yes, if you paste the text you want counted. Sentences, paragraphs, lines, unique words and estimated reading or speaking time appear alongside the totals. Count the final text required by the recipient: this tool does not automatically remove citations, footnotes or a bibliography, and it does not grade writing or detect AI authorship.
What is the difference between lines, paragraphs and characters per line?: Lines counts line breaks in the pasted text, including an empty line at the end. Paragraphs counts nonempty blocks separated by blank lines. The tool gives a total character count and a total line count; it does not report a separate length for every line or include visual wrapping as a new line.
Can I upload a PDF, Word document, picture or website URL?: This counter accepts plain text in its text box. For a PDF with selectable text, use PDF Word Counter to count words and characters per page directly. Copy readable text from other documents and paste it here; a scanned image needs text extraction first. Pasting a URL counts the URL itself, not the website’s contents. There is no PDF, Word, image or webpage importer in this tool.
How are reading time and speaking time estimated?: Reading time divides the word count by 238 words per minute; speaking time uses 150 words per minute. Both are rough pace estimates for the pasted text, not a stopwatch or measured typing speed. Use Reading Time Calculator for a dedicated reading-time workflow and Typing Test to measure words per minute while you type.
Can I compare text with a 140, 150 or 160 character limit?: Use the Characters figure and compare it with the limit you need. The number of visible characters is separate from whitespace-free characters, UTF-16 units and bytes, so use the unit the recipient specifies. The ordinary X preset uses 280 weighted characters, and the SMS preset uses encoding rules; neither is a general-purpose 140- or 150-character limit.
Can I count unique letters and unique characters?: Yes. Every count includes a letter total, unique letters, unique characters and unique words. Unique letters combines case and equivalent accented forms. Unique characters counts distinct literal Unicode grapheme clusters, preserving case and whitespace, so A and a are different entries. The totals include every distinct entry even when the frequency list is limited to the 100 most frequent.

Characters are counted as visible Unicode grapheme clusters, with UTF-16 units, code points and UTF-8 bytes shown separately. X uses weighted length and SMS uses encoding-based segments. Other preset limits are visible-character drafting guides; the destination platform decides what fits.