Word Counter
Count words, characters, sentences and reading time as you type — and check your text against YouTube, Instagram, X and LinkedIn limits.
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Platform limits
Social media character limits (2026)
Every platform truncates text at a different point, and the number that matters is usually not the maximum — it's the point where the feed cuts your text off with a "more" link. Both are listed below. Paste your text above and the counter checks it against these limits live.
| Field | Maximum | Visible before cut-off |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube video title | 100 | ~70 in search |
| YouTube description | 5,000 | ~157 above the fold |
| YouTube tags (combined) | 500 | Not shown publicly |
| YouTube comment | 10,000 | ~500 |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 | ~125 |
| Instagram bio | 150 | All |
| TikTok caption | 4,000 | ~100–150 |
| TikTok bio | 80 | All |
| X (Twitter) post | 280 free / 25,000 Premium | ~280 |
| X bio | 160 | All |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 | ~210 on desktop |
| LinkedIn headline | 220 | All |
| Facebook post | 63,206 | ~477 |
| Threads post | 500 | All |
| SEO title tag | No hard cap | ~60 (Google truncates by pixel width) |
| SEO meta description | No hard cap | ~155 |
Two numbers that trip people up. YouTube descriptions are capped in bytes, not characters — so emoji and non-Latin scripts like Devanagari consume more of your 5,000 than the character count suggests. And on X, every link counts as 23 characters regardless of its real length, while most emoji count as two.
TikTok's caption cap also depends on how you publish: 4,000 in the app, but scheduling tools and the Direct Post API often still enforce 2,200. If you schedule your posts, treat 2,200 as your working ceiling.
How this word counter counts
Counting sounds simple until two tools disagree. Here is exactly what this one does, so you can tell whether a mismatch matters:
- Words — any run of non-space characters. "state-of-the-art" is one word; "hello world" is two.
- Characters — everything you typed, including spaces and line breaks. This is the number platforms measure against.
- Characters without spaces — the same count with all whitespace stripped. Academic word limits often use this.
- Sentences — text ending in a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis. Decimals like 3.14 and filenames like report.pdf are not counted as sentence breaks.
- Paragraphs — blocks separated by a line break, ignoring empty lines.
- Reading time — words divided by 200, the average adult silent reading speed for general prose.
Why your count differs from Microsoft Word
Word counts numbers, dates and standalone symbols as words, and treats some hyphenated compounds as two. Google Docs handles footnotes differently again. A difference of one or two percent between tools is normal and rarely matters — unless you're submitting to a hard academic limit, in which case use whichever tool your institution specifies.
Nothing you type leaves your browser
All counting happens locally in JavaScript. Your text is never uploaded, stored or logged, which matters if you're pasting unpublished work, client copy or anything confidential.
Frequently asked questions
What is the YouTube title character limit?
100 characters. But search results, suggested videos and notifications truncate at roughly 70, so put your keyword and hook inside the first 70.
What is the YouTube description character limit?
5,000 — measured in bytes, not characters. Only the first ~157 show before "Show more", so treat that opening as a standalone snippet.
What is the Instagram caption character limit?
2,200 characters, including hashtags. Only about the first 125 appear in the feed before the "more" link, so the hook has to land there.
How many characters can a TikTok caption be?
4,000 in the app. If you schedule posts through a third-party tool, the older 2,200 limit often still applies — check before you write long.
Does this count characters with or without spaces?
Both. "Characters" includes spaces and line breaks, which is what social platforms measure. "No spaces" strips all whitespace, which is what most academic limits use.
How is reading time calculated?
Words divided by 200, rounded up. 200 words per minute is the average adult silent reading speed for general prose; technical writing runs slower, light fiction faster.
Is my text uploaded anywhere?
No. Counting runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server, stored or logged.
Is there a limit on how much text I can paste?
No. There's no cap, no account and no daily usage limit.
Platform limits verified August 2026. Platforms change these periodically — TikTok and X have both revised theirs within the last two years.