Text Counter

About Text Counter

Text Counter is a word counter and character counter that updates as you type or paste. It shows characters with and without spaces, words, sentences, paragraphs, and the size of your text in UTF-8 bytes. Choose a character limit preset for X (Twitter) posts at 280, Instagram bios at 150, or LinkedIn posts at 3,000 to see a progress bar and how many characters you are over. A Trim Spaces button collapses extra spaces and blank lines, and you can copy or clear the text in one click. Handy for essays, social posts, and meta descriptions.

How to use

1. Type or paste your text into the box.
2. Read the live counts: characters with and without spaces, words, sentences, paragraphs, and UTF-8 bytes.
3. Pick a Character Limit Goal such as X / Twitter (280) to see a progress bar and any overflow.
4. Click Trim Spaces to remove extra spaces and blank lines.
5. Use Copy All to copy the text, or CLEAR to empty the box.

Limitations & notes

• Characters are counted as visible characters (grapheme clusters), so an emoji, including combined ones like a family emoji or a flag, counts as 1.
• Social media limit presets compare against this tool's count; the platforms themselves may count links, emoji, or some scripts differently.
• Words are split on whitespace; runs of Chinese, Japanese, or Thai text without spaces are split into words by the browser's built-in word segmenter, so those counts are estimates.
• Sentences are split on periods, question marks, and exclamation marks, so decimals and abbreviations like "3.5" or "e.g." can inflate the count.
• Trim Spaces edits your text in place, collapsing repeated spaces, trimming each line, and reducing multiple blank lines to one.

FAQ

How does the word counter count words?

Any run of characters separated by spaces, tabs, or line breaks counts as one word. Hyphenated terms like well-known count as one word, and numbers count as words too. Chinese, Japanese, and Thai text written without spaces is split into words with the browser's word segmenter.

Do spaces count as characters?

Chars (w/ space) includes spaces and line breaks, while Chars (no space) removes all whitespace. Most character limits, such as the 280-character limit on X, count spaces.

Why is the byte count higher than the character count?

UTF-8 stores basic English letters in 1 byte each, but accented letters take 2 bytes and Chinese, Japanese, or Korean characters and emoji take 3 to 4 bytes. Byte size matters for database fields, SMS, and APIs with size limits.

How are sentences counted?

Sentences are split at periods, exclamation marks, and question marks. Abbreviations like e.g. and decimal numbers can push the count up slightly, so treat it as an estimate.