Free tool · runs in your browser
Social media character counter
Type or paste a post and watch live counts against each platform's documented caption ceiling, with the source for every number one click away. No account, no upload, nothing sent anywhere.
0 characters · 0 words
- X post0 / 280280 left
The standard ceiling. X Premium raises it; see the Premium row. help.x.com
- X post (Premium)0 / 280280 left
- Instagram caption0 / 2,2002,200 left
The cap covers the whole caption, hashtags and @ tags included. developers.facebook.com
- TikTok caption0 / 2,2002,200 left
Counted in UTF-16 units, so an emoji spends two. developers.tiktok.com
- LinkedIn post0 / 3,0003,000 left
- YouTube description0 / 5,0005,000 left
- Pinterest title0 / 100100 left
- Pinterest description0 / 800800 left
Not shown in the feed view; Pinterest says it feeds relevance. help.pinterest.com
- Facebook post0no documented ceiling
Facebook documents no organic caption limit. developers.facebook.com
- Google Business Profile post0no documented ceiling
No documented limit; the figure usually quoted comes from a community thread. support.google.com
Every ceiling above is read from our sourced reference of platform limits, checked 6 August 2026. See the full spec tables.
Paste a draft into the box above and the counts move as you type. Each row shows one platform's documented caption ceiling, how much of it your draft has spent, and a link to the page the number was read from. Two rows show no ceiling at all: Facebook and Google Business Profile do not publish one, and a counter that invents a number for them would be guessing with a straight face.
None of the ceilings are typed into this tool. They are read out of the sourced spec table this site already maintains, where every value sits beside the platform's own URL and the date it was checked. When a platform moves a limit and that table is re-checked, the counter picks the change up in the same edit. A counter with hard-coded numbers goes quietly wrong within a year, and it has no way of telling you when it does.
Nothing you type leaves this page. The counting is plain arithmetic in your browser, with no server call and no AI anywhere in the loop. If every model provider went down this afternoon, this page would not notice.
How the counting works
- A character is not one thing
- Most platforms count in units that line up with what you would call a character, which Unicode calls code points. TikTok documents its ceiling in UTF-16 units instead, and in UTF-16 an emoji costs two. That is why the TikTok row can read higher than its neighbours for the same draft. This tool counts each row the way its platform documents the limit, rather than one flattering way for all of them.
- Links on X are shorter than they look
- X wraps every link in its own shortener, so a URL spends a fixed amount of the post rather than its typed length. The exact figure lives on a developer page that could not be verified when the spec table behind this tool was last checked, so the counter charges a URL at face value. When your draft carries a link, read the X rows as a cautious estimate; the real composer may charge you less.
- Hashtags and mentions spend the same budget
- On Instagram the documented cap covers the whole caption, hashtags and @ tags included. TikTok parses hashtags and mentions inside the caption field too. Neither gives them a separate pool, so a block of thirty hashtags is not free; it comes straight out of the room your sentences have.
- What happens past the line
- Composers usually stop accepting input at the cap, and an API call that arrives over it fails outright rather than trimming your text for you. The quieter problem sits well below the cap: most feeds fold a long caption behind a see-more link after a line or two, so the ceiling is where a post breaks, not where it works best. Write for the fold first and the cap will rarely be your problem.
Questions the counter raises
Does this counter send my text anywhere?
No. The page makes no network request when you type. Counting happens in your browser, the draft is never uploaded, and closing the tab destroys it. That is also why the tool keeps working during any outage: there is nothing behind it to go down.
Why does an emoji count as two characters in some rows?
Because platforms disagree about what a character is. TikTok measures captions in UTF-16 units, and an emoji occupies two of those, while rows for platforms that count code points treat the same emoji as one. The summary line under the box tells you when your draft contains characters that count double somewhere.
Why do the Facebook and Google Business Profile rows show no limit?
Neither company documents an organic post ceiling on any page the spec table could verify. Figures for both circulate widely, but they trace back to community threads and third-party roundups rather than to official documentation, so this tool will not enforce them. The rows still count your draft; they simply refuse to draw a line no platform drew.
Which Pinterest limit applies, the title or the description?
Both, to different fields. The title has the short ceiling and shows in the feed. The description takes far more text but is not shown in the feed view; Pinterest says it feeds the relevance algorithm instead. The counter shows them as separate rows because a Pin that fits one and busts the other still cannot be published as written.
Where do these ceilings come from, and how current are they?
Every number is read from the social media post size limits reference on this site, where each value carries the platform's own source URL and the date it was checked. The counter imports that data at build time rather than keeping a copy, so the two pages cannot drift apart. If a figure looks off, follow the row's source link and read the platform's page yourself; it is the same page the table was checked against.
Is there a bigger limit for X Premium?
Yes, and it gets its own row. The standard ceiling and the Premium long-post ceiling both come from the same X help page, so the counter shows both and lets you write for whichever account you actually have. A draft that clears Premium but busts the standard row is only publishable from a Premium account.
Or write once and let the tool fit every channel
SpeedRun Social writes each caption to the channel it is going to, inside these ceilings, and posts it for you. A free account includes one campaign a week, every week, which comes to 12 posts, 4 videos and 4 cross-posts a month, plus 300 credits refilled monthly, a Brand Kit, and no credit card. Media on the free plan carries a watermark.