Character counter
Count the characters in your text, with and without spaces, and see what's left for your bio or post.
Room left on each platform
- X (Twitter) post280 left
- Instagram bio150 left
- WhatsApp About139 left
- YouTube title100 left
- TikTok bio80 left
An emoji like 👋🏽 counts as 1 character. Each app counts in its own way, so treat the room left on each platform as a close guide, not a guarantee. It all runs in your browser: your text is never uploaded.
Example input and result
Hello 👋🏽
Result
Characters: 7 Without spaces: 6 Words: 1 Unicode code points: 8 UTF-8 bytes: 14
What the character counter measures
Type or paste your text and the character counter updates as you go. “Characters” counts everything you can see, plus spaces and line breaks, and a skin-tone emoji like 👋🏽 counts as 1, the same as a letter. You get five numbers, and for a bio or a form the first two cover it:
- Characters: everything, spaces included
- Without spaces: the same text minus spaces, tabs, and line breaks
- Words: the words in your text, with emoji left out
- Unicode code points: the Unicode values your text is made of, so 👋🏽 is 2, the hand plus the skin tone
- UTF-8 bytes: how much your text weighs in UTF-8, where a plain letter is 1 byte, é is 2, and 👋🏽 is 8
Room left on each platform, and why it's a guide
Under “Room left on each platform”, the counter subtracts your characters from each limit as you type. Once you pass one, the number switches to “over”, so you know how much to cut. A bio of 163 characters, for example, shows “13 over” for Instagram and “63 over” for a YouTube title, while an X post still has 117 left.
Each app counts in its own way, so read these numbers as a close guide. X, for instance, weighs each emoji and each Chinese, Japanese, or Korean character as 2, and counts any link as 23 no matter how long it is. And 280 is the cap for a standard post: X Premium accounts can write longer ones. Apps also change their limits from time to time, so check the app's own counter before you post something that lands right at the edge.
- X (Twitter) post: 280
- Instagram bio: 150
- WhatsApp About: 139
- YouTube title: 100
- TikTok bio: 80
Why one emoji can count as 1, 2, or 8
An emoji you see as one picture can be built from several pieces. The Mexican flag 🇲🇽 is two special letters your device joins into a flag, and the family 👨👩👧 is three people held together by invisible joiner characters.
For a bio or a post, “Characters” is the number that matters. Code points and bytes help when a system measures text under the hood, like a database field limited in bytes or a form that cuts your text sooner than you expect. In those places an emoji can take far more room than it seems to. Here is how each measure counts those two emojis:
- 🇲🇽: 1 character, 2 code points, and 8 UTF-8 bytes
- 👨👩👧: 1 character, 5 code points, and 18 bytes
- é: 1 character, 1 code point, and 2 bytes
- café: 4 characters, 4 code points, and 5 bytes
Count characters for bios, titles, and forms
If an application form says “500 characters including spaces”, read “Characters”. If it says “excluding spaces”, read “Without spaces”, where line breaks don't count either. Paste the final version, styled letters and all: a strikethrough style like h̶e̶l̶l̶o̶ adds an extra mark to every letter, which still counts as 1 character here but doubles the code points.
Trailing spaces and empty lines count too. If an app says you're over and this counter says you aren't, look for a space or a line break left at the end of your text, or for emoji, which some apps weigh as more than one character. Delete them and paste the text back into the app.
Frequently asked questions
Do spaces count as characters?
Yes. “Characters” includes spaces, line breaks, and punctuation. If you need the count without them, read “Without spaces”, which drops spaces, tabs, and line breaks. In bios and posts, spaces take up room in the limit like any letter.
How many characters is an emoji?
Here, 1, even for a flag or a family built from several pieces. Other apps count in their own way: X counts every emoji as 2. For the technical detail, “Unicode code points” and “UTF-8 bytes” show how many pieces an emoji has and how much it weighs.
How many characters can an Instagram bio have?
This counter uses 150 characters for an Instagram bio and 80 for a TikTok bio, though TikTok has been raising that to 160 on some accounts. Write your bio here and watch “Room left on each platform”. If the app won't save it with only a few characters to spare, trim a little more, because the app may count a symbol in its own way.
Why doesn't X show the same number?
X weighs each emoji and each Chinese, Japanese, or Korean character as 2, and counts every link as 23 characters. This counter counts an emoji as 1 and a link by its real length, so with emoji or links the two numbers won't match. Check X's own counter if you're close to 280.
What are UTF-8 bytes for?
UTF-8 is the most common way to store text on web pages and in files. The byte count tells you how much your text weighs that way: a plain letter takes 1 byte, an accented letter 2, and most emoji 4 or more. It helps if you code or a field limits bytes.