Count every character in your text in real time — with spaces, without spaces, and broken down by letters, digits, punctuation, and lines. Built for social media limits, SMS, meta descriptions, and any platform with a strict character cap.
All counts update live as you type. Nothing is sent to a server.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Character Counter?
A Character Counter tallies every character in a piece of text and breaks the total down by type — letters, digits, spaces, and punctuation. It updates instantly as you type, so you always know exactly how many characters your content contains.
What is the difference between characters with spaces and without spaces?
Characters with spaces counts every character in your text, including spaces, tabs, and line breaks. Characters without spaces excludes all whitespace, giving you only the visible, non-space characters. Social platforms and SMS typically use the with-spaces total.
How are letters, digits, and punctuation counted?
Letters include all alphabetic characters (A–Z, a–z, and accented letters). Digits are the numerals 0–9. Punctuation and symbols covers everything else that is not a letter, digit, or whitespace — commas, full stops, hashtags, emojis, and special characters all fall into this category.
Can I use this for Twitter or X character limits?
Yes. Paste your post into the textarea and watch the character count update live. The total with spaces is the figure most platforms use for their limit. For a full writing overview including reading time, use the Word Counter.
How is the line count calculated?
Lines are counted by splitting the text on line-break characters. An empty textarea shows zero lines. A single line of text with no line breaks counts as one line, even if it wraps visually on screen.
Is my text stored or sent anywhere?
No. All counting runs entirely in your browser. Your text never leaves your device and is not stored on any server. You can paste confidential drafts with complete privacy.
How is this different from the Letter Counter?
The Character Counter gives you total counts and a type breakdown (letters, digits, spaces, punctuation). The Letter Counter goes further by showing how many times each individual letter appears — useful for cryptography, puzzles, and detailed text analysis.
Is this tool free and does it work on mobile?
Yes on both counts. The Character Counter on draft21 is completely free with no account or sign-up required and works on phones, tablets, and desktops.