About the Character Counter
Many fields are limited by characters rather than words: page titles, meta descriptions, SMS messages, social media posts, app store listings and database columns. This counter shows the total number of characters and the number without spaces, and breaks the total down into letters, digits, whitespace and punctuation or symbols.
Characters are counted the way people see them, so an emoji such as 👍🏽 or a letter with an accent counts as one character. The size in UTF-8 bytes is also shown, because some systems measure length in bytes, and emoji and non-Latin characters take up more than one byte each.
How to use it
- Type or paste your text.
- Click Count Characters.
- Review the totals and the breakdown.
Example
Hello, world! 👋 Café 2026
Characters 25 Characters (no spaces) 21 Letters 14 Digits 4 Spaces and line breaks 4 Punctuation and symbols 3 Lines 1 Size (UTF-8 bytes) 29
When to use it
- Keeping page titles and meta descriptions within search engine display limits.
- Checking SMS and social media posts before sending.
- Validating input against database or form field limits.
- Measuring text size in bytes for APIs.
Frequently asked questions
Are spaces counted as characters?
Yes, in the main total. The “no spaces” figure excludes spaces, tabs and line breaks.
Why does an emoji count as one character here but two elsewhere?
Some programs count the underlying code units rather than the visible character. This tool counts what you actually see, which is usually what length limits mean.
What is the UTF-8 byte size for?
Databases, APIs and SMS gateways sometimes limit size in bytes. English letters take one byte each, while accented letters, symbols and emoji take two to four bytes.
Is the text I enter kept private?
Yes. The Character Counter runs entirely in your web browser, so your text is never uploaded to or stored on our servers. Like most free websites, TextForge shows ads from Google, which may use cookies. See our Privacy Policy for details.