Twitter Character Counter
Count characters the way X (Twitter) does: links always count as a fixed 23 characters (t.co), CJK and other wide Unicode characters count as 2, and everything else counts as 1 — against the 280-character limit.
Input
Output
Character Count
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| No data yet | |
Guides
Why a plain character count is wrong for tweets
text.length treats every character as one unit, but that isn't how X (Twitter) actually counts a post against its limit. Three rules make the real count different from the raw length:
- Links always cost 23 characters. Any
http://orhttps://URL you paste is automatically wrapped by X's t.co link shortener, and the shortened link — not your original URL — is what counts against the limit. A 90-character link and a 20-character link both cost exactly 23, whether it's actually clickable or not. - Wide characters cost 2. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and a wide swath of other "wide" Unicode characters (this also covers most emoji, since they share the same Unicode blocks) count as two characters each, not one. A sentence that "looks" the same length in CJK script can silently eat far more of your limit than the same sentence in Latin script.
- The limit is 280 characters. Standard characters — letters, digits, punctuation, spaces, newlines — cost 1 each.
How to use it
- Paste or type your tweet into the box.
- The stats table updates live: effective character count, remaining characters (goes negative once you're over), whether you're over the limit, the character limit itself, and how many URLs were detected and priced at 23 characters.
- Trim your text until "Remaining characters" is positive again.
Who is it for
- Social media managers drafting posts that need to fit in one tweet without guessing.
- Writers in CJK languages who need to see the real cost of wide characters before hitting publish.
- Anyone pasting a link into a tweet who wants to know it only "costs" 23 characters, however long the actual URL is.
How the count is calculated
The tool replaces every detected URL with a fixed 23-character placeholder, then walks the remaining text one Unicode code point at a time: code points in wide-character ranges (CJK ideographs, Hangul, most emoji, and related blocks) count as 2, everything else counts as 1. The sum is the effective character count; 280 minus that count is what's left before you're over the limit.
A note on X's real limit
X has, at various points, offered different limits for different account tiers (free vs. paid, long-form posts, etc.), and the t.co link length itself has changed over the platform's history. This tool uses the fixed values (23-character links, a 280-character limit) that a plain, unauthenticated post is measured against — it doesn't attempt to model every tier or historical variant.
Privacy
Counting happens entirely in your browser. Your text is never uploaded or sent anywhere.