Word & Character Counter
Paste or type text to count words, characters (with and without spaces), sentences, paragraphs, reading time and SMS parts as you type. Free, no signup, no daily limit, and the text never leaves your browser.
Works with any language that separates words with spaces, including Urdu and Arabic. The box switches to right-to-left automatically.
Character limits at a glance
The table checks your text against common limits as you type. "Hard limit" means the platform cuts or refuses longer text; "guideline" means longer text is allowed but usually gets shortened in search results.
| Where | Limit | Type | Your text |
|---|---|---|---|
| X (Twitter) post, standard account | 280 | Hard limit | - |
| Page title in Google results | ~60 | Guideline | - |
| Meta description in Google results | ~155 | Guideline | - |
| One SMS message | 160 / 70 | Hard limit | - |
| YouTube video title | 100 | Hard limit | - |
| Amazon product title | 200 | Hard limit | - |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 | Hard limit | - |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 | Hard limit | - |
Google shortens titles and descriptions by pixel width, not by a fixed number of characters, so the two guideline rows are approximate. Amazon's 200-character title limit applies to most categories; some categories set a shorter one.
How this counter counts
Words are runs of characters separated by spaces, tabs or line breaks that contain at least one letter or digit. Ten spaces in a row are still one gap, and a stray dash or an emoji on its own is not a word.
Characters are counted the way you see them. The counter uses your browser's Intl.Segmenter to split text into graphemes, so 😀, 👍🏽, the flag 🇵🇰 and an accented é each count as one. Older browsers without it get a built-in fallback that merges combining marks, skin tones, joined emoji and flag pairs the same way.
Sentences end with . ! ? … or the Urdu full stop ۔ and Arabic question mark ؟, as long as the next thing is a space or the end of the text - so "3.14" is not two sentences. A last sentence without a full stop still counts.
Paragraphs are lines that contain text. Blank lines between paragraphs are ignored.
SMS parts follow the GSM rules: 160 characters in one message if every character is in the GSM-7 alphabet (a few, such as € and [ ], use two), otherwise 70 per message in Unicode. Longer messages are split into 153- or 67-character parts.
Worked example
Text: Hello world
Text: میرا نام علی ہے۔ آپ کیسے ہیں؟
What this calculator does not do
- Languages written without spaces (Chinese, Japanese, Thai) are not split into words correctly; the character count is still right.
- Sentence counting looks for full stops, question and exclamation marks, so abbreviations like "e.g." or "Dr." can add a sentence.
- The platform limits in the reference table are the platforms' published caps; X counts some characters (most emoji and CJK) as two, which this table does not model.
Frequently asked questions
How does this word counter decide what a word is?
Why can my character count differ from other tools?
Does it work with Urdu, Arabic and other right-to-left text?
How is reading time calculated?
How many characters fit in one SMS?
Is my text uploaded or saved?
Related free tools
Step-by-step guide: How to count words and characters →
Writing Amazon titles and bullets to tight character limits? See Amazon listing optimization →