Most character limits are blunt things. A text message, a meta description, a form field, a database column: each has a number, and each one counts slightly differently. This counter gives you the several numbers you might be asked for, all at once, as you type.
What each figure means
Characters is every character in the box, spaces and line breaks included. This is the number most limits are written against.
No spaces drops all whitespace. Some translation agencies and a few forms quote their limits this way.
Letters, Digits, Spaces and Punctuation and symbols break the text down by kind, which is handy for spotting problems. A text with far more “spaces” than you expect is probably padded. A “digits” figure of zero in a phone number field tells you something went wrong in copying.
Lines counts line breaks plus one. UTF-8 bytes is the true size of the text on disk or in a database. Plain English letters use one byte each, accented letters two, most Asian characters three, and emoji four. If a field is limited by bytes, not characters, this is the figure to watch, and it explains why a short message full of emoji can be “too long”.
Characters are not always what you see
When your text has emoji with skin tones, flags or joined family emoji, a “Visible symbols” figure appears next to the total. One thumbs-up with a skin tone is two characters but one symbol on screen. Platforms disagree about which to count, which is how the same post can fit on one site and be refused on another. For the specifics of where limits fall, the character limit checker compares your text against a dozen common ones.
The frequency table
At the bottom you will see the ten most common characters, with counts and shares. It ignores spaces. Tick “letters only” to leave out digits and punctuation, and untick “treat A and a as the same” to count capitals separately. The table is a small curiosity for most text, but it is also a real tool: puzzle solvers use it to crack substitution ciphers, since in English the letter “e” is the most common, followed by “t” and “a”. If you are working on a cipher, the Caesar cipher tool can test all 25 shifts.
If you want words and sentences instead
The word counter reports words, sentences, paragraphs and reading time, and the reading time calculator is built around speed. For essays, our short guide on how many words you should write puts the numbers in context. And if the count looks too high, stray spaces may be to blame: remove extra spaces cleans them out.