Character and Word Counter
Start typing or paste
How to count characters and words
Type or paste your text in the box. The counts of characters, words, sentences, paragraphs and spaces change as you type. To count how often one word or phrase appears, type it into the Custom field.
There is no length limit. The whole text is counted again after every keystroke, so a paste of several million characters can make typing slow on an older phone or laptop.
What counts as a character, a word or a sentence
Other tools can give a different total for the same text, because each one defines a word or a sentence in its own way. This counter uses these rules:
| Count | What is counted |
|---|---|
| Characters | Every character, including spaces, tabs, line breaks and punctuation. Most emojis count as two. |
| Words | Runs of characters between spaces, tabs or line breaks |
| Sentences | A full stop, question mark or exclamation mark after a letter, digit or closing bracket, followed by a space or the end of the text |
| Paragraphs | Lines of text separated by line breaks; blank lines are not counted |
| Spaces | Spaces, tabs and line breaks |
| Custom | How many times the exact text in the Custom field appears, case-sensitive |
The Custom count is case-sensitive. To count Barcode and barcode together, turn the text into lowercase with Change Case on Lime Convert, our sister site, paste it back and search in lowercase.
Where a character or word limit applies
Social media posts
X limits a standard post to 280 characters, Instagram a caption to 2 200 and LinkedIn a post to 3 000. Check the count before you post, because a post over the limit is cut off or refused.
Page titles and meta descriptions
Google shortens titles and descriptions by pixel width, not by a character count. In practice about 60 characters of title and 155 to 160 characters of description show in full. To see where yours will be cut, paste them into the SERP preview on Lime Convert.
Essays and assignments
Essays, research papers and job applications often set a minimum or maximum word count. Paste the draft to see how far you are from it. If your word processor gives a slightly different total, the word rule in the table above explains why.
SMS messages
One SMS holds 160 characters in GSM-7 encoding, or 70 when the message needs Unicode, for example for an emoji or a non-Latin script. A longer message is sent in several parts, and each part can be charged separately.
Checking a keyword or a term
Use the Custom field to see how often a keyword appears in a page draft, or whether a contract uses the same term all the way through. For the count of every word at once, use the word frequency counter on Lime Convert.
Character limits by platform
| Where | Limit |
|---|---|
| X post | 280 characters |
| Instagram caption | 2 200 characters |
| Facebook post | 63 206 characters |
| LinkedIn post | 3 000 characters |
| YouTube title | 100 characters |
| YouTube description | 5 000 characters |
| Google title | about 60 characters (about 600 pixels) |
| Google meta description | about 155 to 160 characters |
| SMS, GSM-7 | 160 characters per part |
| SMS, Unicode | 70 characters per part |
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Frequently asked questions
Does the character counter include spaces?
Yes. Every character counts, including spaces, tabs, line breaks and punctuation. For a count without spaces, subtract the Spaces figure from the Characters figure; the Spaces figure includes tabs and line breaks too. Most emojis count as two characters, because the counter counts the UTF-16 code units JavaScript uses, and some emojis built from several parts count as more.
How does the counter decide what a word is?
A word is any run of characters between spaces, tabs or line breaks. Punctuation does not split words, so 'well-known' counts as one word and so does 'end.Start' if there is no space after the full stop. A number such as 2026 counts as a word. Word processors that split on hyphens or ignore numbers can give a slightly different total.
Can I count a specific word or phrase?
Yes. Type the word or phrase into the Custom field next to the counts, and the number beside it shows how many times that exact text appears. The search is case-sensitive, so 'Barcode' and 'barcode' are counted separately. It also matches inside longer words: searching for 'code' counts the 'code' in 'barcode' too.
Is there a maximum text length?
No. There is no fixed maximum. The text is counted in your browser and is not sent anywhere, so the speed depends on your device. Every keystroke counts the whole text again, and on a text of several million characters typing can lag on an older phone or laptop.
Why does X say my post is too long when the counter shows fewer than 280 characters?
Because X weights some characters. Its developer documentation counts every link as 23 characters, whatever its real length, every emoji as 2 and each Chinese, Japanese or Korean character as 2. This counter shows the plain length. For a post with a link, take the link's length off the Characters figure and add 23. For Chinese, Japanese or Korean text, count each of those characters twice.
Does a line break count as a character?
Yes, one character each. Pressing Enter adds one to the Characters count and one to the Spaces count. A line break copied from a Windows program is two characters in the file, a carriage return and a line feed, but the browser turns it into one inside the text box, so it counts once. Some writing apps leave line breaks out of their character count, so their totals can be lower.
How do I count how often every word appears?
Not with this counter. Its Custom field counts one word or phrase at a time. For a list of every word in a text with the number of times each one appears, paste the text into the word frequency counter on Lime Convert, eancheck's sister site. It also runs in the browser, and it can leave out common words such as 'the' and 'and'.
Does the counter work for Chinese or Japanese text?
Partly. The Characters count is right: each Chinese or Japanese character counts as one. The Words count is not, because the counter splits words at spaces, and Chinese and Japanese do not put spaces between words, so a whole sentence counts as one word. Sentences that end in the ideographic full stop 。 are not counted either. For these languages, go by the Characters figure.