Character Count Limits: X, Instagram, LinkedIn, SMS & SEO

A character counter with spaces counts every letter, number, punctuation mark, emoji and space in your text. That is the number almost every platform uses for its limit: X (Twitter), Instagram, LinkedIn, SMS and web forms all count spaces. Paste your text into our character counter to see both counts, with and without spaces, as you type.

Below are the limits people check most often, and the quirks that make a count come out "wrong".

With spaces vs without spaces

If a form just says "maximum 500 characters", assume spaces are included. Our counter shows both side by side, along with words, sentences and paragraphs. For word limits rather than character limits, use the word counter and see our guide on how to check word count in Word, Google Docs and PDFs.

Social media character limits

Platforms change their limits from time to time, so if a post is rejected, check the app's current help page.

X (Twitter) limit

Standard accounts get 280 characters per post. Links are counted as a fixed length however long the URL is, because X shortens them. Most emoji count as two characters on X, so an emoji-heavy post fills up faster than our counter suggests. Paid Premium accounts can post much longer text, but only the start shows in the timeline.

Instagram bio and captions

The bio limit is 150 characters, which goes fast once you add emoji and a line break or two. Captions allow 2,200 characters, but only the first line or so is shown before "more", so put the hook first.

LinkedIn

Posts allow 3,000 characters; roughly the first two or three lines show before "see more". The headline under your name allows 220 characters and is what recruiters see in search results, so lead with your role and key skill.

SMS: 160 characters, or 70

A single text message holds 160 characters, but only if every character is in the basic GSM-7 alphabet (English letters, digits and common punctuation). If you include even one emoji, a Hindi or other non-Latin letter, or certain curly quotes, the whole message switches to Unicode encoding, which fits only 70 characters per message.

Longer messages are split into parts and joined on the phone. Each part loses a few characters to the joining information, so a multi-part message holds 153 characters per part in GSM-7, or 67 in Unicode. For bulk SMS, where each part is billed, this matters. Text copied from Word often contains curly quotes (’ instead of '), which can quietly trigger Unicode; retype them as straight quotes if you are close to the limit.

SEO: title tags and meta descriptions

Google does not use a fixed character limit. It truncates titles and descriptions by pixel width, so a line of wide letters (W, M) gets cut sooner than one of narrow letters (i, l). Treat the numbers above as targets, put your main keyword and the reason to click early, and do not worry if a description is occasionally rewritten by Google; that happens regardless of length.

Character count in Word, Google Docs and Excel

• MS Word: Review > Word Count shows "Characters (no spaces)" and "Characters (with spaces)".
• Google Docs: Tools > Word count (Ctrl+Shift+C) shows "Characters" and "Characters excluding spaces".
• Excel and Google Sheets: =LEN(A1) counts all characters in a cell including spaces. =LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","")) counts without spaces. =LEN(TRIM(A1)) ignores leading, trailing and double spaces.
• iPhone and Android: there is no built-in counter in most apps. Copy the text and paste it into the character counter in your browser.

In programming, len("text") in Python and "text".length in JavaScript give the length of a string, though JavaScript's .length counts some emoji as two because of how they are stored.

Why counts differ between tools

• Emoji. Some emoji are made of several code points joined together (family emoji, flags, skin tones). One tool may count a family emoji as 1, another as 5 or more, and X counts each emoji as 2.
• Line breaks. A line break is a character. Windows text sometimes stores it as two (carriage return plus line feed), so pasted text can count slightly higher in some forms.
• Trailing spaces at the end of a line are invisible but still counted.
• Links. X counts every link as a fixed length; a plain counter counts the full URL.

Tips for fitting a character limit

• Cut filler words first: "in order to" becomes "to", "due to the fact that" becomes "because".
• Use numerals: "10" instead of "ten".
• Avoid ALL CAPS. It does not save characters and reads like shouting. If you typed with Caps Lock on, the case converter fixes it in one click with Sentence case.
• Remove double spaces and stray line breaks pasted in from other documents.
• Check the final version in the target app, since emoji and links may be counted differently there.

Common mistakes

• Assuming spaces do not count. On almost every platform they do.
• Writing an SMS in Hindi or with emoji and being surprised that it splits after 70 characters.
• Writing a meta description to exactly 160 characters of wide capital letters and having it truncated anyway.
• Pasting from Word into a form and bringing curly quotes, long dashes and hidden line breaks along with the text.

Questions