What is the Character Counter?
The Character Counter shows exactly how long your text is: characters with and without spaces, letters, digits, punctuation, lines and bytes. Limit bars tell you instantly whether it fits a post on X, an Instagram bio, a Google title or meta description, or a Play Store or App Store listing field.
It also works out how many SMS messages a text needs. A single ₹ sign, Hindi or Gujarati letter or emoji switches an SMS from the 160-character GSM alphabet to Unicode, which allows only 70 characters per message, a common surprise when sending OTPs and promotional SMS.
How to use it
- Type or paste your text.
- Read the counts; they update as you type.
- Check the limit bars for the platform you are writing for.
- Check the SMS panel to see the encoding and how many messages the text needs.
Example
Diwali sale: 50% off ₹999!
Characters: 26 SMS: Unicode (because of ₹), 1 message, 44 characters left
Features
- Detailed counts. Characters, no-spaces count, letters, digits, spaces, punctuation, symbols and lines.
- Bytes. UTF-8 bytes (for databases and APIs) and UTF-16 units (for JavaScript and SMS).
- SMS segments. GSM-7 or Unicode detection, messages needed and characters left.
- Social and SEO limits. X, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google title and meta description.
- App store limits. Google Play title, short and full description; App Store name, subtitle and keywords.
- Emoji and Indian scripts. Emoji and conjunct letters are counted the way people see them.
Frequently asked questions
Do spaces count as characters?
Yes, almost every platform counts spaces and line breaks. The “no spaces” figure is useful for some academic and translation limits.
Why does my SMS only allow 70 characters?
Standard SMS uses the 7-bit GSM alphabet with 160 characters per message. Any character outside it, such as ₹, Hindi, Gujarati, curly quotes or emoji, forces Unicode encoding with 70 characters per message (67 per part when split).
Why is the character count different from the byte count?
Many characters take more than one byte in UTF-8: ₹ takes 3 bytes and most emoji take 4. Database column and API limits are often set in bytes, not characters.
Are the X (Twitter) counts exact?
Close, but X counts every link as 23 characters and some scripts as two characters each, so very long posts with links or Chinese, Japanese or Korean text may differ slightly.
Is my text saved or uploaded?
Your text is kept only in this browser so a refresh does not lose it. It is never uploaded.
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