Character Counter Online
Paste text and instantly see how many characters, words, and lines it has. The counting happens in your browser, so nothing is sent anywhere.
Other Tools
Generate a password, QR code, or barcode right in your browser.
What this character counter counts
Characters is the total including spaces, punctuation and line breaks. No spaces strips out spaces, tabs and newlines, which is the version universities and print briefs tend to ask for. Words are runs of letters and digits, so don't and e-commerce each count once, and a sentence is anything ending in a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis. Lines go up with every line break while paragraphs only count blocks separated by a blank line. Reading time is the word count divided by 180 a minute. Most emoji register as one character here, though a compound one built from several joined symbols counts as more, and some platforms weight emoji as two against their own limit.
The four character limits on the badges
The badges under the box track the limits people hit most, and each turns red as soon as the text passes it. A post on X is capped at 280 characters on a free account. An SMS is shown as 70 rather than 160 on purpose: a message written in plain Latin letters fits 160 characters, but a single emoji, accent or non-Latin letter switches the whole message to the wider encoding and the limit drops to 70, so 70 is the number that never surprises you with a second billed message. The SEO title badge sits at 60 and the meta description at 160, both rules of thumb rather than hard caps, because Google truncates by pixel width and not by character count. A 60-character title survives on almost any screen.
Counting a draft nobody else should see
The usual reason for counting characters is that the text isn't public yet. The whole counter is a short piece of JavaScript in your browser tab, typing sends nothing to a server and no history is kept, so an unpublished article, a cover letter or a clause from a contract can be pasted in and forgotten. When the text is going onto a picture and not into a post, the add text to photo tool draws it there in the browser too, and the password generator and QR code generator also run on your side.
Frequently asked questions
How do I count the characters in a piece of text?+
Paste it into the box. All seven counters update on every keystroke, with the character count and the count without spaces sitting next to each other, so you can read whichever one your limit is written in.
Do spaces count as characters?+
In the main counter, yes, and that is the number nearly every platform means. The second card gives the count with every space, tab and line break stripped out, which is what an academic or a print brief usually asks for.
How are words counted?+
A word is a run of letters or digits. An apostrophe or a hyphen inside one keeps it together, so e-commerce and don't each count as a single word, while a number like 2026 counts as one too.
How is the reading time worked out?+
Words divided by 180 a minute, which is a common silent-reading estimate for an adult on straightforward prose. Dense technical text reads slower than that and a familiar news story reads faster, so treat it as an estimate rather than a measurement.
What are the limit badges for?+
A quick check against the four limits people hit most: 280 characters for a post on X, 70 for an SMS, 60 for an SEO title and 160 for a meta description. A badge turns red the moment the text goes over.
Is my text saved or sent anywhere?+
No. The counting runs in your own browser tab and closing the page erases the text.