How it works
Characters are counted as Unicode code points, so an accented letter or most emoji count as one character — the way people read them. Spaces, line breaks and punctuation all count, because every platform limit includes them. The "no spaces" figure strips every kind of whitespace.
The limit rows tell you how much room is left for common destinations. X allows 280 characters per post (links always count as 23, and some CJK characters count double, so treat this as a close guide). Search engines usually show around 150–160 characters of a meta description and 50–60 characters of a title before cutting it off.
Text messages are trickier. Plain Latin text uses the 7-bit GSM alphabet: 160 characters fit in one SMS, and longer messages are split into 153-character segments. A single emoji or character outside that alphabet switches the whole message to Unicode, where the limit drops to 70 (67 per segment). Characters like € and [ take two GSM slots.
Counting happens locally in your browser; nothing you paste is sent anywhere.
Frequently asked questions
Why does one emoji make my SMS cost more?
Emoji are not in the GSM-7 alphabet, so the phone switches the entire message to UCS-2 encoding. That cuts the per-message limit from 160 to 70 characters.
Is the byte count the same as the character count?
Only for plain ASCII. In UTF-8, accented letters take 2 bytes, most Asian scripts take 3, and emoji take 4. Databases and APIs often limit bytes, not characters.
Do line breaks count as characters?
Yes. Each line break counts as one character, which matches how most form fields and social networks measure length.