Our free character counter and letter counter will automatically count how many characters, words, and paragraphs are in your text. Great for social media and essays. Just type or paste your text input below to get started!
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Character Counter Tool Instructions
- Enter the text you need to be counted above.
- Our tool will automatically count the number of characters in your text.
- That’s it! Use the online character counter wherever you need it.
Also try our online word counter tool.
Why Does Character Count Matter?
Character counts can be found everywhere in writing. From college applications and homework assignments to social media platforms, various entities impose character limits, so it’s important to know how many characters your writing contains. Some people even assume word count and character counts are important for SEO.
What Is Character Count?
Computer characters are any letters, numbers, spaces, punctuation marks, or symbols that can be typed on a computer. Each character requires one byte of space on a computer, so the word “mouse” takes up 5 bytes.
Character Count FAQs
Do Spaces Count as Characters?
Yes, a space counts as 1 character since a space takes up one byte in a computer’s memory. If you use our character counter tool above, you will find that the phrase “Hello World” ha 11 characters since the space counts as one as well.
Do Punctuation Marks Count as Characters?
Yes, punctuation marks, like spaces, count as characters since they take up the same amount of space in a computer’s memory. You will notice this when you try to add too many exclamation marks to a Tweet.
How Many Characters Do Emojis Count As?
Emojis actually count as two characters since it takes up two bytes 😀.
How Many Characters Do Special Characters Count As?
Special characters such as pound (#), the dollar sign ($), and ampersand (&) each count as one character.
What Other Platforms Give Character Count?
Most word processors have a word and character counter built in. Here are instructions on how to access the built-in counters for some common ones.
Character Count in Google Docs
Go to Tools > Word Count or use the keyboard shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + C.
Character Count in Microsoft Word
You can see the word count at the bottom of your document (although you may have to right-click on the word count and check “Character Count”). You can also access it by clicking Review > Word Count in the menu/ribbon.
Common Character Counts
Social media channels have word and character limits for the content you post to their sites. Below are the word count limits for various social media platforms.
TikTok Character Limits
TikTok limits posts and comments to 150 characters (20-40 words) and profiles to 80 characters.
Twitter Character Count
Twitter allows up to 280 characters in regular Tweets (40-70 words) and 10,000 characters in DMs (Direct Messages). The ideal length of a Tweet is 71-100 Characters.
Facebook Post Character Limits
Facebook has very generous character limits of up to 63,206 characters per post. However, the ideal length of a Facebook post is 40-80 characters.
Instagram Character Limits
The limit for an Instagram caption is 2,200 characters, but the ideal length is 138-150 characters. The maximum length of an Instagram bio is 150 characters.
Reddit Character Limits
Reddit titles can be up to 300 characters long. Comments are limited to 10,000 characters and Reddit posts are limited to 40,000 characters.
SMS Character Count Limits
SMS text messages are limited to 160 characters. After this point, SMS messages will send as separate messages which is why you may receive 2-3 messages that need to be read as one long message. Apple’s iMessage can technically be unlimited characters, but you may start to see errors when the message approaches 20,000 characters.
Title Tags
Title tags for websites or blog articles can have unlimited characters, but Google will cut off at showing about 60 characters in search results. Use our title tag checker to make sure you know what your title tag will look like in search results.
LinkedIn posts can be 3,000 characters. Some other common LinkedIn character limits are:
- Professional Headline (Desktop): 220 characters
- Professional Headline (Mobile): 240 characters
- About (Previously called Summary): 2,600 characters
- Experience Section Position Title: 100 characters
- Experience Section Position Description: 2,000 characters
- Comment: 1,250 characters
Check out this post for more character limits on social media.
