Character counter

Count characters, words and lines as you write

Paste or type any text into the box and the character counter shows three numbers: the total characters, the number of words and the number of lines. It's the fastest way to check whether a piece of writing fits a limit, whether that's a social post, an SEO title, a text message, a form field or an essay with a word count.

Character limits are everywhere online. Search engines cut off long titles and descriptions in results, social platforms cap post and bio lengths, SMS messages split after a set number of characters, and many web forms quietly truncate anything over their maximum. Counting by hand is slow and error-prone; this tool gives you the exact figure in an instant.

Because the counter includes spaces and punctuation in the character total, it matches how most platforms measure length. Word counts are useful for school and work assignments, articles and translations that are priced per word.

How to use the character counter

1. Paste your text into the text box, or type directly into it.
2. Submit the text to run the count.
3. Read the results: characters (including spaces), words and lines.
4. Edit your text and count again until it fits the limit you're aiming for.

Common uses

• Keeping page titles and meta descriptions within the length search engines usually display.
• Checking that a post, caption or bio fits a social network's limit before you publish.
• Hitting a minimum or maximum word count for an essay, cover letter or application answer.
• Estimating translation or copywriting costs that are billed per word.
• Counting lines in a list, a CSV export or a block of code.

Tips and things to know

• Spaces and line breaks count as characters on most platforms, and this counter includes them too.
• Emoji and some special symbols can count as more than one character on certain platforms, so leave a small margin when you're right at a limit.
• For SEO, aim for page titles of roughly 50 to 60 characters and meta descriptions of roughly 120 to 155 characters. Google truncates by pixel width, so treat these as guides, not hard rules.
• Need the size in bytes rather than characters (for a database column or an API limit)? Use the text size calculator.
• To tidy text before counting, try the duplicate lines remover or case converter.

Frequently asked questions

Does the character count include spaces?

Yes. The character total includes spaces, punctuation and line breaks, which is how most websites and apps measure length.

How are words counted?

Words are counted as groups of characters separated by spaces or line breaks. Hyphenated words such as "well-known" are usually counted as one word.

What is the ideal length for a meta description?

There's no fixed limit, but Google typically shows about 120 to 155 characters on desktop before cutting the text off. Put the most important information first.

Is there a limit to how much text I can paste?

You can count long documents such as essays or articles. For very large files, it's quicker to split them into sections.

Is my text saved anywhere?

The text is only used to calculate the counts shown on the page. Avoid pasting passwords or other sensitive data into any online tool as a general habit.

Related tools

• Text size calculator: Get the size of a text in bytes (B), Kilobytes (KB) or Megabytes (MB).
• Case converter: Convert your text to any kind of text case, such as lowercase, UPPERCASE, camelCase, etc.
• Duplicate lines remover: Easily remove duplicate lines from a text.
• Reverse words: Reverse the words in a given sentence or paragraph with ease.
• Lorem Ipsum generator: Easily generate dummy text with the Lorem Ipsum generator.