Count characters and track exactly how close you are to a limit, whether that's an SMS, a social post, a meta description, or a title tag. Nothing you type here is ever sent to Brekzy.
A character counter tells you exactly how many characters are in a piece of text, updating as you type or paste. Unlike a general word-count tool, its main job is comparing that number against a target: a platform's hard limit, a field's maximum length, or a guideline you're trying to hit. Type or paste your text above, optionally set a limit, and watch the count and progress update in real time as you edit.
Character count and word count measure two different things, and mixing them up leads to text that technically "fits" but actually doesn't. A tweet-length caption with five long words can blow past a strict character limit while still reading as a short sentence, and a sentence with fifteen short words can sit comfortably under the same limit. Some fields, like an SMS segment, a meta description, or a title tag, enforce a hard or effectively-hard character limit regardless of how many words you used to get there. Others, like an essay, a blog post, or a report, care about word count because length there is about coverage and depth, not a fixed character budget. This tool exists specifically for the first case: situations where the character count itself is the constraint you need to watch, which is why the limit-tracking display sits front and center instead of being one stat among many.
Character limits exist because the systems that display your text have fixed space, whether that's a phone screen, a search results snippet, or a single billing unit on a carrier's network. Go over, and the consequence isn't always a friendly warning: a text message can split into a second billed segment, a search engine can truncate your title or description mid-word with an ellipsis, and a social post can get cut off or simply refuse to publish. Knowing your exact character count before you hit send or publish means you catch these problems while you can still fix them, instead of after the fact.
Most social platforms cap how long a single post can be, and those caps vary by platform and change over time as products evolve, so treat any specific number as a common limit you'll encounter rather than a permanent, guaranteed-current fact. A short-form post limit in the low hundreds of characters (around 280 is a widely recognized example) is common for microblogging-style platforms, while captions on image and video platforms tend to allow much longer text before truncating the visible preview. When you're drafting a post and need to check it against a specific number, type or paste your caption above, set a custom limit or use the 280 preset as a starting point, and adjust the number for whichever platform you're actually publishing to.
The traditional single SMS segment holds 160 characters when the message uses only standard GSM characters. Go over that, and most carriers don't reject the message, they split it into multiple segments and stitch them back together on the receiving end, which can mean getting billed for more than one message even though it displays as one. Messages that include certain emoji or characters outside the basic GSM alphabet can drop that per-segment limit to 70 characters instead, since those messages use a different encoding under the hood. Use the "160 — SMS" preset above to check a message against the standard single-segment limit before you send it.
Search engines don't enforce a strict character limit on title tags or meta descriptions the way a form field with a maxlength attribute does. Instead, they measure the rendered pixel width of your text and truncate whatever doesn't fit, which means the same character count can display fully in one search result and get cut off with an ellipsis in another, depending on the letters used, the font, the search engine, and whether someone is on a desktop or a phone. Around 60 characters for a title and around 150 characters for a description are common guidelines that tend to display in full for typical text, which is why they're offered here as quick presets, not because search engines check text against those exact numbers. Use them as a helpful target to aim for, then verify how your actual title and description look in search results whenever possible.
The main character count includes spaces, since that matches how most character limits (SMS, social platforms, meta descriptions) actually measure length. A separate "Characters (no spaces)" stat sits below it if you need the count without spaces.
Each emoji counts as one character, even a combined emoji like a skin-tone modifier or a multi-part sequence that is technically several Unicode code points under the hood. This tool uses grapheme-aware counting (via Intl.Segmenter where available) so the number matches what a person actually sees, not the raw code-unit length JavaScript's .length property would report.
Yes. Type any number into the limit field, or click one of the quick presets (160 for SMS, 280 for a short social post, 150 or 60 for the common SEO guidelines). The tool then shows your progress toward that limit as you type.
Yes. Click the "160 — SMS" preset, or type 160 into the limit field yourself, and the progress display will tell you exactly how many characters you have left, or how many you are over.
No. Counting happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Nothing you type is sent to Brekzy, logged, or saved, whether you close the tab immediately or leave it open all day.
The textarea never blocks you from typing past a limit, because seeing exactly how far over you are is often more useful than being cut off mid-sentence. The "Characters over limit" line tells you the exact overage so you know how much to trim.
No. The 150 and 60 character presets for meta descriptions and titles are common guidelines, not hard limits enforced by search engines. Actual display length depends on the search engine, the font, and the device, so treat them as helpful targets rather than a pass/fail rule.
Explore Brekzy's growing collection of free calculators, converters, AI tools, and practical resources.