Online Character Count Tool
TextCounter is a free online character and word counting tool. All results update instantly as you type or paste your text — no button to press, no page reload. The counter displays characters, words, sentences, paragraphs, spaces, keyword density, and reading time all at once.
What is a character counter?
A character counter counts every symbol in a piece of text, including letters, digits, punctuation marks, and spaces. It is essential whenever you must stay within a character or word limit — writing social media posts, SMS messages, email subject lines, SEO meta descriptions, ad copy, or academic essays.
How to use this character counter
Paste or type text into the editor above. All six statistics update in real time with every keystroke. The platform limit indicators at the bottom of the editor turn amber when you are within 10% of a limit and red when you exceed it. Use the keyword density panel to analyse word frequency, and the settings panel to filter stopwords by language.
What does each statistic mean?
Characters counts every symbol including spaces. Characters (no spaces) excludes whitespace. Words counts sequences of non-whitespace characters. Sentences counts segments ending with a period, exclamation mark, or question mark. Paragraphs counts blocks of text separated by blank lines. Spaces counts space characters only.
Character limits for popular platforms
X (Twitter) allows 280 characters per post. Meta descriptions are recommended to stay within 150–160 characters for full display in Google search results. A standard SMS segment fits 160 characters; longer messages are split by carriers. Instagram captions support up to 2,200 characters but are truncated at 125 in the feed. LinkedIn posts allow 3,000 characters.
Frequently asked questions
Does this tool save my text?
No. All processing happens entirely inside your browser using JavaScript. Your text is never sent to any server, stored in a database, or shared with third parties. Refreshing the page clears all content.
How is reading time calculated?
Reading time is estimated at 238 words per minute, close to the average adult silent reading speed. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute, suitable for presentations and podcasts. Both are approximations.
What counts as a word?
Any sequence of non-whitespace characters separated by spaces counts as one word. Hyphenated compounds like "well-known" count as one word. Numbers and mixed alphanumeric strings are also counted as words.
Does the counter work on mobile?
Yes. The tool is fully responsive and works on any modern smartphone or tablet browser with no app download required.
Does it work with non-English text?
Yes. Character and word counting works with any Unicode text including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Cyrillic, Hindi, and others.
Is there a character limit for pasted text?
There is no imposed limit. The tool handles very long documents, though files exceeding several megabytes may slow the real-time analysis on older devices.
What is keyword density?
Keyword density shows how often each meaningful word appears as a percentage of the total word count. Common stopwords are excluded by default. It is a useful metric for SEO content writing.
How do stopwords work?
Stopwords are common words (like "the", "and", "is") that are excluded from the keyword density calculation. You can choose a language preset or add and remove individual words in the Settings panel.
Can I use this to check Twitter character count?
Yes. The X / Twitter limit pill at the bottom of the editor shows exactly how many of the 280 allowed characters remain, turning red if you exceed the limit.
How do I count characters without spaces?
The second stat box shows the character count with all whitespace excluded.