About Character Counter
Character Counter answers the two questions that come up whenever text has to fit: how long is this including the spaces, and how long is it without them. Both figures are returned together so the difference is visible rather than something you have to work out.
The count is taken over Unicode code points rather than storage units. That matters for any text containing emoji, accented letters or non-Latin scripts, because those take more than one storage unit each in many environments — so a tool that counts storage units will report a larger number than a platform that counts characters. This page counts the way a character limit is normally enforced.
Spaces here means all whitespace, not just the space bar: tabs and line breaks are removed from the second count as well. If you are measuring text against a limit that is defined per line, count one line at a time, since a multi-line count mixes the whitespace rules together.
What it cannot do is tell you how a particular platform will score your text. Two figures are reported and nothing else: there is no per-platform preset, no section-by-section breakdown, and no history of earlier counts. Text is also never trimmed or normalised before measuring, so leading and trailing whitespace is included in the with-spaces figure exactly as it was pasted. When a limit is specified in words rather than characters, or is enforced per paragraph, this page will not answer that question and a word counter or a manual pass is the better route.
How to use Character Counter
- 1 Paste the text you are measuring.
- 2 Read the count with spaces, which is what most platform limits measure.
- 3 Compare it with the count without spaces to see how much of the length is whitespace.
Frequently asked questions
Which figure do character limits usually apply to?
The one including spaces in almost every case, since a platform measures the string it receives rather than the visible words. Where a limit is described as a word count instead, the difference between the two figures is the whitespace you have used.
Are tabs and line breaks counted as characters?
Yes in the with-spaces figure, and no in the without-spaces figure, because the second count strips all whitespace rather than only the space character. A heavily indented block can therefore show a much larger gap between the two numbers than a single line of prose.
Why does my word processor show a different count?
Different products count different things — some include trailing whitespace, some count storage units, and some exclude non-printing characters. The variation is in the definition rather than the arithmetic, so compare a tool against the platform whose limit you are trying to satisfy.
Free, online, and private
Free to use
Character Counter is completely free. There is no account to create, no login, and no hidden charge or usage limit.
Runs online in your browser
It is a free online tool that runs entirely in your browser. Nothing to download or install — open the page and start using it right away.
Your data stays private
All processing happens locally on your device. Your input is never uploaded, stored, or tracked, so it never leaves your browser.
How Character Counter behaves in detail
These are the specifics of this implementation — the exact ranges, defaults and fixed settings you are working with.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Counts reported | characters with spaces and without spaces |
| Counting unit | Unicode code points, so one emoji is one character |
| Whitespace removed | all whitespace for the no-spaces figure — spaces, tabs and newlines alike |
| Update mode | live, on every keystroke |
Compiled from the implementation of this tool and checked against it by itoolnet.
What Character Counter does not do
Knowing the edges of a tool saves more time than another list of its features. These are the cases where it will not do what you might expect.
- Code points are not the same as user-perceived characters. A flag emoji or a family emoji is several code points joined by zero-width characters, so it counts as more than one here — a composing method like grapheme clusters would give a different number.
- No per-platform limit is enforced or warned about. Character ceilings differ between social networks (and some count by UTF-16 units rather than code points), so this figure is not directly comparable to a platform's own counter.
Tested and documented by itoolnet, the team that builds and maintains this site.