Character Counter
Count characters with and without spaces, see what is left under a limit, and check letters, emoji, UTF-8 bytes and SMS segments.
Count characters with and without spaces, grouped into letters, digits, punctuation and emoji. Enter a limit to see how many characters you have left. The counter also shows the UTF-8 size in bytes and how many SMS segments a text message would need.
How to use this tool
- Paste or type your text.
- Optionally enter a character limit, such as the maximum length of a form field, to see what remains.
- Untick “Count line breaks” if your target ignores them.
- Check the SMS rows before sending a long text: one character outside the GSM alphabet switches the whole message to Unicode.
Formula
Characters left = limit − characters · SMS estimate: 1 segment up to 160 GSM or 70 UTF-16 units; longer texts are packed into 153- or 67-unit parts without splitting code points.
Characters are browser-defined grapheme clusters: flags and skin-tone emoji count once. CRLF and CR line endings become LF before all counts. In GSM-7, ^ { } [ ] ~ | \ and € use two units. SMS assumes a 6-byte concatenation header, no national-language tables and no provider rewriting; actual limits may differ.
Example
The sample “Meet me at Café Lumière at 7:30 — I’ll bring the tickets! 🎉” has 59 characters (47 without spaces): 39 letters, 3 digits, 12 spaces, 4 punctuation marks and symbols (: — ’ !) and 1 emoji. It takes 68 bytes in UTF-8, because é, è, the dash, the apostrophe and the emoji need 2–4 bytes each. The em dash, curly apostrophe and emoji are not in the GSM alphabet, so as a text message it is sent in Unicode: 60 UTF-16 units, which still fit in 1 SMS of up to 70.
Frequently asked questions
Do spaces count as characters?
Yes. In almost every character limit a space counts as one character. “Characters without spaces” is shown for the few cases that leave them out.
Why does an emoji count as 1 here but 2 somewhere else?
Most emoji take two UTF-16 code units, so software that counts code units sees 😀 as 2 characters and a skin-tone emoji as 4. The “UTF-16 code units” row shows that number.
How many characters fit in one text message?
160 if every character is in the GSM-7 alphabet, or 70 if any character needs Unicode — an emoji, Chinese or Korean text, an em dash or a curly quote. Longer messages normally allow 153 GSM units or 67 UTF-16 units per part; extension characters and emoji may use two.
What is the difference between characters and bytes?
In UTF-8, English letters take 1 byte, accented letters 2, most Asian scripts 3 and emoji 4. Byte limits apply to database columns and some APIs.
Sources
Last updated: 2026-10-30