Free Character Counter

Count characters with and without spaces, along with words and sentences. Handy when you are writing to a strict limit — a meta description, an ad headline or a social post.

Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded

Your text

Counts update as you type.

Characters

Without spaces

Words

Sentences

How to use this tool

Paste or type your text into the box.
Counts update live as you type.
Use the "without spaces" figure where a platform counts that way.

What is Character Counter?

Character limits appear all over marketing work: meta descriptions, ad copy, social posts, form fields. Getting cut off mid-sentence looks careless, and in search results a truncated description wastes the space you had to persuade someone to click.

Note that search engines truncate by pixel width, not character count — a line of capital letters takes far more space than the same number of lowercase ones. Character count is a fast proxy, not the exact rule.

Best practices

Front-load the important words so meaning survives truncation.
For meta descriptions aim for roughly 140–158 characters.
Check the pixel-width estimate too where a tool provides one.
Remember emoji often count as two or more characters on some platforms.

Frequently asked questions

Why do some platforms count characters differently?

Because of how they handle Unicode. An emoji or an accented character can count as one, two or more units depending on the platform. Treat any counter as a close guide rather than an exact match.

Should I count with or without spaces?

For meta tags and social posts, with spaces — that is what the platform measures. "Without spaces" is mostly useful for academic or translation work priced per character.