Twitter character counter

Counts your post against the 280 character limit on X, plus name and bio limits.

This Twitter character counter tells you how long a post is before you paste it into X. Free accounts get 280 characters per post, and the counter updates on every keystroke so you can see exactly how much you need to cut. It also helps with the shorter name and bio fields.

How to use it

1. Type or paste your post in the box above.
2. Watch the Characters number as you write.
3. Keep it at or under 280 for a standard account.
4. Press Copy and paste the finished post into X.

What this tool does

The counter measures the raw text you type: letters, spaces, punctuation, emoji and line breaks. That is the number to compare against the limits X enforces.

One important difference between this counter and the one inside X: links are special. X rewrites every URL through its own shortener, so any link counts as exactly 23 characters no matter how long it really is. A 12-character link and a 180-character tracking URL cost the same. This page counts the literal text, so if your draft contains a long URL, subtract its real length and add 23 to get the number X will see.

Attachments are free. Images, GIFs, videos and polls do not consume characters. Quoting another post does not either — the quoted post appears as a card, and only your own commentary is counted.

Examples

How a long link changes the arithmetic:

Trimming in practice. Before, 301 characters:

We spent the last two weeks rebuilding our onboarding flow from scratch, and the thing that made the biggest difference was not the design at all — it was cutting the number of required fields from eleven down to three, which is something we probably should have tried a very long time ago.

After, 189 characters:

We rebuilt onboarding. The biggest win was not design — it was cutting required fields from eleven to three. Should have tried that years ago.

Shorter posts also read better on a phone, where a full 280 characters fills most of the screen.

When you need it

Drafting outside X is normal for anyone posting seriously: threads get written in a document, scheduled posts go through a spreadsheet, and client copy is approved in email. None of those places show you a character count against 280.

• Writing a thread and making sure each part stands on its own inside the limit.
• Checking a bio rewrite against 160 characters before saving it.
• Adapting a post you already wrote for LinkedIn or Instagram, where the limits are far more generous.
• Preparing announcements in advance, so nothing has to be edited under pressure at launch time.
• Fitting a quote into a post with room left for your own comment.

A practical target is roughly 240 characters. That leaves space for someone to quote you and add a line of their own without having to cut your words.

Doing it without this tool

Inside X: the compose box has a circular progress ring that fills as you type and turns red near the end. It works well, but only once you are already in the app with the post half written.

Google Docs: Ctrl+Shift+C, then enable the live count. It counts characters, but it has no idea a link should be 23.

Excel or Google Sheets: =LEN(A1) gives the count for a cell. For a scheduling sheet, =280-LEN(A1) in the next column shows how many characters you have left, which is the number you actually care about.

Notepad++: View, Summary reports characters for the file or the current selection.

Command line: echo -n "post text" | wc -m.

All of these count the characters. None of them handle the link rule, and none of them tell you that images and quoted posts are free.

Threads, replies and longer posts

A thread is just a chain of posts, and every part of it is measured separately against the same 280 characters. That is why threads written in a document so often need reworking: a paragraph that reads well at 340 characters has to be split, and the split rarely falls somewhere natural.

A workable method is to write each part as its own block in the box, count it, cut it under 280, then move to the next. Aim for each part to make sense in isolation, because people arrive at a thread from the middle far more often than from the top.

Replies count the same way. The username you are replying to is shown above your text and does not consume characters, so a reply gets the full 280 whether it is the first in a conversation or the fiftieth.

Paid accounts can post up to 25,000 characters, but the timeline still shows only the first few lines before a Show more link. Long posts are read by the people who were already going to read them; the opening two lines still do all the recruiting.

Privacy: your text never leaves your browser

Everything here runs locally in JavaScript. Your draft is not sent to a server, not stored and not analysed. Reload the page and it is gone.

That is deliberate. Drafts of posts are often written before an announcement is public — a hiring plan, a product date, a response to something sensitive. Pasting that into a tool that transmits text is a real risk. This page has no backend to transmit it to.

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Frequently asked questions