gizmobench

Character Counter

Count characters, words, sentences, paragraphs and reading time as you type, and see how much room is left in an X post, an Instagram caption, an SMS, a meta description, a title tag or a LinkedIn post. Each of those platforms counts differently, so the tool applies each one's own rule rather than quoting a single number and hoping it fits.

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
Remaining
No limit chosen
What a character is here. Characters are counted as the characters you see, so an emoji or an accented letter is one; a separate line gives UTF-16 units and UTF-8 bytes, which is what most platform limits actually count. The platform limits listed are the published ones and platforms change them.

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
  • 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 unitstext.length, which is what most platform limits enforce
    0
  • UTF-8 bytesWhat a database column measures
    0
  • Code pointsUnicode scalars, higher wherever emoji or accents appear
    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

Platform limits

Published limits, each counted by that platform’s own rule rather than by a single character count. Track one and the stage shows the room left.

  • X postLatin counts 1, CJK and emoji count 2, and any link would count 23.
    280 left, 0 of 280 weighted characters
  • Instagram captionThe characters you see in the caption. Hashtags and @mentions count against the same ceiling.
    2,200 left, 0 of 2,200 characters
  • SMS messageGSM-7, one message. 160 characters left before another is needed.
    160 left, 0 of 160 septets
  • Meta descriptionGoogle truncates by pixel width rather than by a character count, so 155 to 160 characters is the range that usually survives.
    160 left, 0 of 160 characters
  • Title tagGoogle truncates by pixel width here too, and about 60 characters is the width that usually fits a result on a desktop screen.
    60 left, 0 of 60 characters
  • LinkedIn postThe characters you see in a post. The feed shows the first few lines and hides the rest behind a see more link.
    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.

Letter frequency

The letters used most, folded to lower case, as a share of the letters in the text rather than of every character.

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?
Aim for 155 to 160 characters. Google truncates search snippets by pixel width rather than by a character count, so there is no exact ceiling: a line of narrow letters survives longer than a line of capitals. 155 to 160 is the range that usually shows in full. The same applies to the title tag, where about 60 characters is the width that normally fits.
How does the word count handle hyphens and Chinese?
Words are found with the Unicode word-breaking rules rather than by splitting on spaces. Hyphenated words such as state-of-the-art are stitched back into one word, which is what every word counter people have used does. Chinese and Japanese are written without spaces, so in any browser that ships a word segmenter, which every current one does, they are segmented into words rather than counted as one long word. In an older browser without one there is no dictionary to consult, and the count falls back to 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.

Characters are counted as the characters you see, so an emoji or an accented letter is one; a separate line gives UTF-16 units and UTF-8 bytes, which is what most platform limits actually count. The platform limits listed are the published ones and platforms change them.