Count words, sentences and paragraphs, estimate reading and speaking time, and spot overused words.
Character Counter
Count characters, bytes and SMS segments, and check text against common platform limits.
Counted in your browser — your text isn’t sent anywhere
How it works
- Characters counts what you see (grapheme clusters), so 👍🏽 or 🇿🇦 count as one.
- UTF-16 units is how JavaScript and many platforms count length — emoji often count as 2 or more.
- Bytes is the UTF-8 size, useful for databases and APIs with byte limits.
- SMS checks every character against the GSM-7 alphabet: if all fit, a message holds 160 characters (153 per segment when split); otherwise it uses Unicode (UCS-2) at 70 (67 per segment). Extended GSM characters like € and [ count double.
Example
The pre-filled promotion is 71 characters (72 UTF-16 units, because the emoji takes two). Because of the 😊 emoji it must be sent as a Unicode SMS, where a single message holds only 70 — so it becomes 2 SMS segments instead of 1. Remove the emoji and it fits in one standard 160-character SMS.
Frequently asked questions
Why do emoji count as more than one character?
Many systems count UTF-16 code units, and an emoji often uses two (or more, for combined emoji like families or flags). We show both: “characters” is what you see, and the SMS and byte counts reflect how the text is actually stored and sent.
How are SMS segments calculated?
A single SMS holds 160 characters in the GSM-7 alphabet. Messages using characters outside it — including emoji and many accented letters — switch to UCS-2 encoding, which holds only 70 characters. Longer messages are split into segments of 153 (GSM-7) or 67 (UCS-2) characters, and each segment is usually billed separately.
Is my text stored?
No. Everything is counted in your browser as you type.
Related tools
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Convert text to UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case, Sentence case, camelCase, snake_case and more.
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