Character Counter
Count characters, with and without spaces, and check your text against platform limits like X posts, SMS, and meta descriptions — instantly, in your browser.
A character counter counts every character in your text — with and without spaces — and checks it against platform limits like X’s 280 characters or an SMS’s 160. 99digest’s counter runs in your browser and counts emoji correctly as single characters.
How character counting works
Characters are counted as full Unicode graphemes, not raw code units — so an emoji, an accented letter, or any other multi-part character counts as one character, matching what you actually see on screen. Many simpler tools miscount here because they measure raw code points instead.
Select a platform limit (X post, Instagram caption, Facebook post, SMS, meta title, meta description, LinkedIn post, or YouTube title) to see exactly how many characters remain, or how far over you are — going over a limit never blocks you, it just tells you honestly where you stand.
For SMS specifically, the counter automatically detects whether your message fits the GSM-7 character set (160 characters per message, 153 per segment when a message needs to split across several) or requires Unicode/UCS-2 encoding (70 characters per message, 67 per segment) — the same detection your phone carrier uses. Adding a single emoji or certain accented characters can switch a message from GSM-7 to UCS-2, which is why a message that looks short can still split into two SMS segments.
FAQs
Do spaces count?
Yes, in the main “Characters” count. Use “Characters (no spaces)” if you need a count that excludes them.
Do emoji count as one character?
Visually, yes — this counter treats an emoji as a single grapheme, matching what you see on screen. Different platforms count emoji differently in their own limits (X, for example, counts some emoji as more than one character internally), which is one reason a platform’s own character count can differ slightly from a generic counter.
Why 160 characters for SMS, but only 70 with an emoji?
Standard SMS uses the GSM-7 character set, which fits 160 characters per message. Any character outside that set — including virtually all emoji — forces the message into Unicode (UCS-2) encoding, which only fits 70 characters per message. This counter detects which encoding your actual text would need and shows the correct limit.
What’s the real meta description limit?
Search engines truncate meta descriptions by pixel width, not character count, so “155 characters” is a widely-used guideline rather than an exact rule. Treat the meta description preset here as helpful guidance, not a hard cutoff.
Is my text uploaded anywhere?
No. This tool runs entirely in your browser — your text is never sent to a server, uploaded, or stored anywhere.