Character Limit Checker
Type once, check any limit: pick a platform preset and the remaining-character bar tracks every keystroke. Each platform also has its own page with the limit's fine print. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
280 of 280 remaining
The fine print lives on each platform's page
A raw number is rarely the whole rule: X counts URLs as 23 characters, Instagram truncates captions long before the cap, SMS switches budgets entirely when you add an emoji, and Google's snippet cut is about display width, not a hard character count. Each dedicated page pairs the live checker with that platform's actual behavior: X/Twitter, Instagram captions, SMS segments, YouTube titles, and meta descriptions.
How characters are counted
Limits here are checked in Unicode code points — the convention most platforms document — so é is one character and most emoji count as one. The notable exception is SMS, where encoding rules change the arithmetic completely; the SMS counter implements the real GSM-7/Unicode segmentation rather than pretending 160 is always 160. Details on the methodology page.
One glyph, four different counts
"How many characters is this?" has no single answer, and the family emoji 👨👩👧 is the cleanest proof. On screen it is one glyph. Under the hood it is five Unicode code points — three person emoji stitched together by two invisible joiners — which is what this checker's meter reports. In an SMS it becomes UCS-2 text measured in UTF-16 units: eight of them, more than a tenth of a 70-unit segment gone on one glyph. And X, as of mid-2026, weighs any emoji — however complex the sequence — as exactly 2 toward its 280. One picture on screen; 1, 5, 8, or 2 depending on who's counting. This is why the presets above are genuinely different checks rather than one counter with different finish lines, and why the number that matters is always the one computed by that platform's rules.
The presets cover the five limits people hit most, but the custom limit turns this page into a checker for any budget: an Instagram bio (150 characters), a Google title's practical display window (about 60), a YouTube description opener (the first ~150 shown above the fold), or your own CMS field. One habit worth keeping: platform caps are product decisions that change without notice — the figures here match each platform's published rules as of mid-2026, and each dedicated page notes what to re-verify before a consequential send. The commonest mistake this site sees is reusing one draft across platforms because it "fit" on the first one; run each destination against its own preset, because as the emoji above shows, the same text is a different length everywhere it goes.
Everything is processed locally in your browser and never transmitted or stored. See the methodology page.