Twitter character counter
- Characters left
- 280
- Weighted count
- 0
- Plain characters
- 0
- Words
- 0
- Posts needed
- 0
- Premium (25,000) left
- 25,000
How the X character count works
X doesn’t just count letters. Since 2017 it has used a weighted count (documented in its open-source twitter-text library):
- Weight 1: Latin letters, numbers, punctuation, spaces and line breaks, plus scripts like Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi and Thai.
- Weight 2: Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters, most symbols, and every emoji, even emoji built from several code points such as flags, skin tones and family emoji.
- Weight 23: every link. X wraps links in its t.co shortener, so a 12-character link and a 200-character link both cost 23.
That’s why a Japanese post tops out around 140 characters, and why pasting a long tracking link doesn’t eat your whole post. See every limit, from bios to DMs, on the Twitter character limit page, which also has an interactive explainer of the weights.
Tips for fitting a post into 280
- Cut openers like “I just wanted to say”. Start with the point.
- Swap “in order to” for “to”, and “a lot of” for “many”.
- Numerals are shorter than words: “7” not “seven”.
- If it still doesn’t fit, it’s probably a thread. Paste it into the thread maker and auto-split it.
Questions
How many characters can a tweet have?
A standard post on X can have up to 280 weighted characters. X Premium subscribers can post up to 25,000 characters, but anything past 280 is collapsed behind “Show more” in the timeline.
Why is my count higher than the number of letters?
X weighs characters. Emoji count as 2, Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters count as 2, and every link counts as 23 no matter its real length. This counter applies the same rules.
Do spaces and line breaks count?
Yes. Each space and each line break counts as one character.
Do @mentions count toward the limit?
Mentions written in the text of the post count like any other characters. When you reply, the automatic @username at the start of a reply does not count.
Does the counter store what I type?
Only in your own browser, so the text is still here when you come back. Nothing is uploaded. You can clear it with the Clear button or on the privacy page.