What is the difference between characters with spaces and without spaces?

"Characters (with spaces)" counts every character in your text, including spaces, tabs, and line breaks. "Characters (without spaces)" strips all whitespace before counting, giving you only the visible letter and punctuation count.

How does the Twitter/X character counter work?

Twitter/X counts characters with spaces up to a limit of 280. URLs are shortened to 23 characters by Twitter, but this tool counts raw characters to give you a conservative upper bound.

Why is the SMS limit 160 characters?

Standard SMS uses the GSM-7 encoding, which supports up to 160 characters per message. If your message exceeds 160 characters, carriers split it into multiple segments, which may incur extra charges.

What reading speed does the tool use?

Reading time is estimated at 240 words per minute, a commonly cited average adult silent reading speed.

Is my text sent to a server?

No. All counting and analysis happens entirely in your browser. Nothing is ever sent to any server.

Character Counter

Name: Character Counter
Availability: InStock
Author: Nham Vu

Instantly count characters, words, sentences, and paragraphs — with live limit bars for Twitter/X, SMS, title tags, meta descriptions, and Facebook posts.

Your Text

Paste or type text on the left to see your character count.

Text Statistics

Characters
(with spaces)

Characters
(no spaces)

Words

Sentences

Paragraphs

Reading time
(240 wpm)

Platform Limits

Twitter / X 0 / 280

SMS Message 0 / 160

SEO Title Tag 0 / 60

Meta Description 0 / 160

Facebook Post 0 / 63,206

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Summary

Instantly count characters, words, sentences, and paragraphs — with live limit bars for Twitter/X, SMS, title tags, meta descriptions, and Facebook posts.

How it works

Paste or type your text into the input field on the left.
Character count, word count, sentence count, paragraph count, and reading time update live as you type.
Review the limit progress bars on the right to see how close you are to Twitter/X, SMS, title tag, meta description, and Facebook post limits.
Click "Sample Text" to load an example passage and explore all statistics.
Click "Clear" to reset the textarea and start fresh.

Use cases

Check tweet length before posting to stay within the 280-character Twitter/X limit.
Verify SMS message length to avoid splitting into multiple messages at 160 characters.
Optimize page title tags (under 60 characters) and meta descriptions (under 160 characters) for SEO.
Count characters and words in essays, emails, or social media captions with precision.

Frequently Asked Questions

Last updated: 2026-06-09 · Reviewed by Nham Vu