Character Counter

How to use Character Counter

1. 1

   Type or paste your text — or upload a PDF, Word or text file.

2. 2

   Read the character count with and without spaces at the top; both update live with every keystroke.

3. 3

   Watch words, sentences and paragraphs alongside, so one tool covers any kind of limit.

4. 4

   Edit right in the box until the text fits your limit, then copy it out.

Count characters, words and more as you type

A character counter answers the question every form, platform and editor eventually asks: will this fit? Paste or type your text and the figures update live — characters with spaces, characters without spaces, words, unique words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, and an estimate of reading and speaking time. There is no button to press and no limit on how much you paste.

The two character figures exist because platforms disagree. Most limits — X/Twitter, SMS, meta descriptions, form fields — count every character including spaces. Some academic and translation-industry counts exclude them. Showing both means you can check against whichever rule applies without doing arithmetic.

The limits people check most often

Social posts are the daily case: X/Twitter allows 280 characters, an Instagram caption 2,200, a LinkedIn post about 3,000, a YouTube title 100. For search results, a title tag is safest under about 60 characters and a meta description around 155-160 before Google truncates it. An SMS is 160 characters per segment — longer messages are split and billed as several.

Word counts matter for a different set of tasks: essays and applications with a 500-word cap, abstracts limited to 250, cover letters that should stay under a page. The pages figure and reading time help there — a page of prose is roughly 500 words, and reading time is calculated at 200 words per minute, the usual estimate for an adult reader.

• X/Twitter post → 280 characters with spaces
• Instagram caption → 2,200 characters
• Meta description → about 155-160 characters
• SMS → 160 characters per segment
• College essay → often 500 or 650 words

More than a number: files, frequent words and a page view

You do not have to paste. The upload button reads a text file directly, so a draft can be checked without opening it elsewhere. A top-words panel lists the most frequent words with their share of the text, which is a quick way to spot an overused term or check keyword density in a web page.

For longer drafts there is a page view that lays the text out as printed pages with a thumbnail rail, and a fullscreen mode that turns the page into a distraction-free writing space with the counts still visible. Press Esc to leave it. All of the figures are computed from the text in the box, so editing there updates every number instantly.

Nothing you paste is sent anywhere

Every step runs inside your browser, using the WebAssembly and Canvas APIs your device already ships with. No file is uploaded, no copy is kept, and nothing sits in a queue on a server waiting to be deleted — which is also why the tool keeps working with the network disconnected.

Counting characters is trivial work for a browser, which is exactly why there is no reason for the text to leave it. Drafts of cover letters, unpublished articles, private messages being trimmed to fit — all of them are processed by JavaScript in the page and discarded when you close the tab. Nothing is logged, and there is no account to attach a history to.

That also makes the counter usable offline and on a phone: open the page once, and it keeps counting with the network off, on the same device you are writing on.

Because nothing is stored, the box is empty every time you return — a feature, not a bug, for anyone counting text that should not linger anywhere. If you want to keep a draft, the text stays in the app you are writing it in; this page is only the measuring tape you hold up against it.

Frequently Asked Questions

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