Character Counter
Count characters, words, sentences, and paragraphs in real time — see character counts with and without spaces plus estimated reading time.
About Character Counter
Our free Character Counter is a real-time text analysis tool that instantly counts characters (with and without spaces), words, sentences, paragraphs, and estimates reading time as you type or paste text. It's perfect for writers, students, social media managers, and anyone who needs to track text length.
Character limits are everywhere — Twitter/X posts (280 characters), Instagram captions (2,200), SMS messages (160), meta descriptions for SEO (155-160), Google Ads headlines (30), and many more. This tool shows you at a glance how your text compares to these common limits with visual progress bars.
The reading time estimate is based on the average adult reading speed of 200-250 words per minute. This is useful for blog posts, articles, speeches, and presentations where you need to estimate how long your content will take to consume. All analysis happens instantly in your browser — your text is never sent to any server.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q What is the difference between characters with and without spaces?
Character count with spaces includes every character in the text, including spaces, tabs, and line breaks. Character count without spaces excludes whitespace characters and only counts letters, numbers, and punctuation. Many platforms (like Twitter/X) count spaces as characters toward their limit, so the "with spaces" count is usually what matters.
Q How is reading time calculated?
Reading time is estimated based on the average adult reading speed of approximately 225 words per minute. This is a commonly used standard in publishing and web content. The actual reading speed varies by individual and content complexity — technical content may take longer while simple content may be faster. The estimate is rounded up to the nearest minute.
Q How are sentences and paragraphs counted?
Sentences are counted by detecting sentence-ending punctuation marks: periods, exclamation points, and question marks. Paragraphs are counted by detecting line breaks (when you press Enter). A block of text without line breaks is counted as one paragraph. Empty lines between paragraphs are not counted as separate paragraphs.