Count characters with and without spaces, plus words and sentences. See how your text stacks up against Twitter, SMS, and SpeakLucid character limits.
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A character counter is a tool that tells you exactly how many characters are in your text. Unlike a word counter that splits on spaces, a character counter measures every individual letter, digit, punctuation mark, and space. This is crucial when you are working with platforms or services that enforce character limits — from social media posts to SMS messages to text-to-speech APIs.
Our free character counter runs entirely in your browser. As you type or paste text, it updates instantly with the total character count, characters without spaces, word count, sentence count, and line count. It also shows visual progress bars comparing your text against popular platform limits so you can see at a glance whether your message fits.
Character limits exist across the digital world. Twitter/X enforces 280 characters for standard posts. SMS messages are limited to 160 characters per segment — go over and your text is split into multiple messages, potentially costing more. Meta descriptions for SEO should stay under 155-160 characters. SpeakLucid's free tier provides 5,000 characters per month for text-to-speech conversion, while paid plans offer up to 500,000.
Understanding your character count helps you write more effectively. It forces concise, impactful writing when you are limited, and it helps you plan your budget when using character-based services like text-to-speech APIs. Many professional writers and marketers check their character count as part of their editing workflow.
Some platforms count spaces as characters (Twitter, for example), while others do not. Academic citation styles sometimes require character counts without spaces. Our tool shows both numbers so you always have the right metric for your situation. The "without spaces" count strips all whitespace including regular spaces, tabs, and line breaks.
Text-to-speech services, including SpeakLucid, bill based on character count rather than word count. This is because the TTS engine processes each character individually to produce audio. Knowing your exact character count helps you estimate costs and stay within your plan's limits. For reference, the average English word is about 5 characters, so 5,000 characters is roughly 1,000 words — enough for a solid blog post voiceover or a 6-minute podcast segment.
Check out our other free tools designed for writers and content creators:
Characters include every symbol in your text — letters, numbers, punctuation, and spaces. Characters without spaces excludes all whitespace (spaces, tabs, line breaks), which is useful for platforms and systems that count only visible characters.
Standard Twitter/X posts allow up to 280 characters. Premium subscribers on X can post up to 25,000 characters. Our character counter shows you exactly how close you are to the 280-character limit in real time.
SpeakLucid's free tier includes 5,000 characters per month. The Starter plan offers 100,000 characters/month for $9, and the Pro plan provides 500,000 characters/month for $29. All plans include access to all 17 AI voices.
No. All character counting happens directly in your browser using JavaScript. Your text is never sent to our servers or stored anywhere. The tool works entirely offline once the page loads.