Social Media Character Counter

What is a social media character counter?

A character counter tells you how long your text is and whether it fits where you want to post it. Every platform has its own ceiling — X cuts you off at 280, a YouTube title at 100, an SEO meta description gets truncated around 160 — and going over means your message gets clipped, hidden behind a “more” link, or rejected outright.

This tool shows a live character and word count as you type, plus a row for each major platform telling you how many characters you have left (or how many you’re over), with a little progress bar for each. One text box, every limit at a glance.

How to use it

1. Write or paste your post, caption or meta text into the box.
2. Watch the characters and words totals update as you type.
3. Scan the platform limits list — green-ish “left” means you’re fine; red “over” means trim it.

The limits that matter

• X / Twitter — 280. The classic tight constraint; every character counts.
• Bluesky — 300 and Threads — 500. A little more room than X.
• Instagram & TikTok captions — 2,200. Generous, but only the first ~125 characters show before “more”, so front-load the hook.
• LinkedIn post — 3,000, with the first ~210 visible before the fold.
• YouTube title — 100, though titles are most effective well under that.
• SEO meta title — ~60 and meta description — ~160. These aren’t hard limits but the points where Google tends to truncate in search results.

Tips for writing to a limit

• Front-load the hook. On Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn, only the first line or two show before the fold — put the point first.
• Shorter often wins. Even where you can write 2,200 characters, punchy posts usually perform better. The limit is a ceiling, not a target.
• Watch links and emoji. Some platforms wrap links to a fixed length or count emoji as multiple characters; this counter treats an emoji as one, so leave a little headroom.
• Mind SEO truncation. Keep meta titles near 60 and descriptions near 160 so they don’t get cut with an ellipsis in search results.

Why count before you post

Hitting publish only to see your caption end in “…”, or watching a carefully written meta description get chopped in Google, is an easy mistake to avoid. Checking the count first keeps your message intact and your calls to action visible. Because everything runs locally in your browser, you can draft and trim privately, then paste the final version wherever it’s going. When a post grows into longer-form copy, the word & character counter gives you fuller stats, and before publishing a link post you can check how its preview card looks with the Open Graph preview.