Text Tools
Character counter.
Paste text and see the character count update live: with and without spaces, UTF-8 bytes, code points, words, lines and paragraphs. Pick a limit to see how many characters you have left.
Input
Result
Type or paste text to count it.
About this character counter
A "character" here is a user-perceived character: an extended grapheme cluster as defined in Unicode Standard Annex #29. A letter with a combining accent, a thumbs-up with a skin tone, a flag and a family emoji each count as 1. The other figures are shown beside it because different systems count differently: UTF-8 bytes is the storage size, Unicode code points counts every scalar value, and UTF-16 code units is what JavaScript's .length returns.
Worked example
a 👍🏽 éCharacters: 5 (a, space, thumbs-up with tone, space, é). Without spaces: 3. Code points: 6, because the thumbs-up and its skin-tone modifier are two code points. UTF-8 bytes: 13. UTF-16 code units: 8.
Character limits
The limit menu counts plain characters against a fixed number. Two limits are included, both from the platform's own documentation or code: X's standard post length of 280 (the maxWeightedTweetLength value in X's open-source twitter-text configuration, retrieved 2026-10) and Mastodon's default of 500 (Mastodon documentation, retrieved 2026-10). Mastodon server admins can change theirs.
X does not count one character as one: it weights characters and counts every link as 23. For a count that follows those rules use the X (Twitter) character counter. Other platforms change their limits and counting rules without notice, so check the platform before relying on any number.
Limits
Words are found with the browser's word segmentation (Intl.Segmenter), which handles most languages but can differ slightly from Microsoft Word. A paragraph is a block separated by a blank line. Input is limited to 5 MB and stays on your device.
Sources
- Unicode Standard Annex #29: Unicode Text Segmentation (retrieved 2026-10)
- twitter-text config/v3.json (retrieved 2026-10)
- Mastodon documentation: Posting (retrieved 2026-10)
FAQ
How do I count characters with and without spaces?
Paste your text. "Characters" includes spaces, tabs and line breaks; "Characters without spaces" leaves out all whitespace.
Why is the byte count bigger than the character count?
UTF-8 uses 1 byte for basic English letters but 2 to 4 bytes for accented letters, symbols and emoji. A single emoji can be 4 bytes or more.
Does an emoji count as one character?
Yes. The tool counts grapheme clusters, so an emoji, even a multi-part one like a family or a skin-toned hand, counts as one character. Some systems count it as 2 or more, which is why the code point and UTF-16 figures are shown too.