The emoji problem, and why counts differ
Ask most tools how long 👨👩👧 is and they will say 5, 8, or 11. That is because
they are counting the units the text is stored in, not the characters you can see. A family
emoji is built from several people joined by invisible connectors; a flag is two regional
indicator letters; a thumbs-up with a skin tone is a base emoji plus a modifier.
This counter measures grapheme clusters — the units a human perceives.
One emoji is one character. It also normalises accents first, so é counts as one
character whether it arrived as a single character or as an e with a combining
accent glued on. Those two look identical on screen and are a common cause of a count
being mysteriously off by a few.
Character limits worth knowing
- SEO title tag — about 60 characters before Google truncates it.
- Meta description — about 155 characters.
- Single SMS — 160 characters in GSM-7, or 70 if the message contains an emoji or certain accented letters.
- Instagram caption — 2,200 characters.
- LinkedIn headline — 220 characters.
- Alt text — keep it under about 125 characters for screen readers.
With spaces, without spaces, or letters only
Application forms and translation quotes usually mean characters including spaces unless they say otherwise. Typing tests and some publishers exclude them. Both are on the page, along with a letters-only count that drops digits and punctuation too.
How each count is defined
Most counters give you a number and never tell you what they measured, which is why three tools can disagree about the same paragraph. Here are our rules, in full.
- Characters
- Grapheme clusters — what a human would point at and call one character. An emoji like 👨👩👧 counts as 1, not 5. Accented letters count as 1 whether they were typed as a single character or as a letter plus a combining accent.
- Words
- A run of letters or digits, held together by apostrophes, hyphens and internal
periods.
don't,state-of-the-art,3.14andU.S.A.are each one word. Links and email addresses count as one word each. - Sentences
- Text ending in
.!?or…, followed by a space or the end of the text. Titles like Dr. and Mt. never end a sentence, initials like J. R. R. are held together, and decimals such as 3.14 are left alone. A line break also ends a sentence, so headings and bullet points are counted properly. - Vowels
- A, E, I, O, U, plus their accented forms — café has two vowels, naïve has three. Y is handled by whichever rule you pick above.
- Consonants
- Every other letter. Digits, spaces and punctuation are neither vowels nor consonants, which is why vowels plus consonants is smaller than your character count.
One thing worth being clear about: this counts letters, not sounds. Queue has four vowel letters and one vowel sound. If you need phonetic syllables rather than written vowels, the syllable estimate in the panel above is closer to what you want.
Common questions
How do I count characters with spaces?
Paste your text into the box on this page. The headline figure includes spaces, and the panel below shows the same text with spaces removed, along with a letters-only count.
Do spaces count as characters?
Yes, in the main count. A space is a character, and most forms and limits that ask for a character count include them. Both figures are shown so you can use whichever your form expects.
How many characters is an emoji?
One, in this counter. Many tools report 2, 5 or more because they count the underlying storage units rather than the visible character. If you are checking against a system that counts differently, such as a database column limit, expect a higher number there.
Why does my character count differ from another tool?
The usual reasons are emoji, accented letters typed with combining accents, and line breaks. This tool counts visible characters and normalises accents first, which matches what you see on screen.
Does a line break count as a character?
Yes, each line break counts as one character. Note that some platforms count a line break as two.
Is the character counter free?
Yes, with no account, no limits and no ads. Your text stays in your browser.