Character and Word Counter
Paste any text and get instant counts of characters (with and without spaces), words, lines and UTF-8 bytes. Useful for anyone writing against a hard limit: meta descriptions, SMS segments, tweet drafts, form field validation or database column sizing.
How to use
- Paste or type your text into the box.
- Read the live counts for characters, words, lines and bytes.
- Use the with/without-spaces figures depending on what your target platform counts.
Counting characters sounds trivial until you hit the edge cases. A 'character' can mean a Unicode code point, a UTF-16 code unit, a grapheme cluster or a byte, and different platforms pick different definitions. Twitter counts most characters as 1 but CJK characters as 2. An SMS holds 160 characters in the GSM-7 alphabet but only 70 once a single emoji forces UCS-2 encoding, which is why one emoji can triple your SMS bill. A single family emoji like a four-person household can be one visible glyph built from seven code points joined by zero-width joiners.
The byte count matters for developers specifically: a VARCHAR(255) column in MySQL with utf8mb4 measures characters, but index key limits and payload budgets measure bytes, and Hindi or Bengali text takes 3 bytes per character in UTF-8. If you are validating input length on the backend, decide up front whether your limit is characters or bytes and test with non-Latin text.
Writers use this tool for the classic SEO limits, roughly 60 characters for a title tag and 140-160 for a meta description before Google truncates, plus LinkedIn's 3,000-character posts and app store description caps. Everything is computed server-side in one pass and nothing you paste is retained for anonymous users.
Examples
Input: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Output: 44 characters, 36 without spaces, 9 words, 1 line, 44 bytesInput: नमस्ते world
Output: 12 characters, 11 without spaces, 2 words, 1 line, 24 bytes (UTF-8)Frequently asked questions
Does the counter include spaces?
Both figures are shown: total characters including spaces, and a separate count excluding them. Most platform limits (meta descriptions, tweets, SMS) count spaces, so use the inclusive number by default.
Why is the byte count higher than the character count?
UTF-8 stores ASCII in 1 byte but most Indian-language, CJK and accented characters in 2-4 bytes. Databases and network payloads care about bytes, so multilingual text is 'bigger' than it looks.
How long should a meta description be?
Aim for 140-160 characters. Google truncates by pixel width rather than a fixed count, but staying in that range keeps descriptions intact on both desktop and mobile results.
How are words counted?
Words are sequences of non-whitespace characters separated by spaces, tabs or newlines. Hyphenated compounds like 'well-known' count as one word.
Related tools
Velona is India's INR-native AI API gateway with 300+ models, UPI top-up from ₹10, no foreign card needed. These tools are free forever.