A character counter built for social media
PostTruncate is a free, browser-based character counter that works entirely on your device — no uploads, no accounts needed. Paste or type any text and you instantly see character count, word count, reading time, and letter distribution update as you write.
It’s built for anyone working with text under a limit: writers trimming an essay, marketers checking a headline, developers auditing a string. Because everything runs client-side, your drafts never leave your browser.
SMS encoding and segment counting
SMS has two encoding modes and most tools ignore the difference. PostTruncate detects automatically whether your message uses standard GSM-7 (160 characters per text) or Unicode (70 characters) — and the switch can happen the moment you type a single emoji or special character.
It also flags extended GSM characters — things like the Euro sign (€), square brackets, and the pipe symbol — which stay in GSM-7 mode but each consume two character slots instead of one. That hidden cost is why messages sometimes segment unexpectedly.
When your text spans multiple segments, the built-in segment calculator shows exactly how many texts your message will send, accounting for the User Data Header overhead that reduces per-segment limits to 153 characters (GSM) or 67 characters (Unicode).
SMS Character Counter
X (Twitter) limits and automatic thread splitting
X (Twitter) has two rules that catch people off guard: the 280-character limit, and the fact that every link — regardless of length — counts as exactly 23 characters. PostTruncate handles both, so the counter you see matches what X will actually report once the t.co wrapper is applied.
When your draft runs long, the built-in thread splitter breaks it into numbered posts at natural sentence boundaries — never mid-word. Each card shows its character count and position, so you can review the full split before you post.
Twitter / X Character Counter
Instagram and Facebook character limits
Instagram caps captions at 2,200 characters, but only shows roughly the first 125 before hiding the rest behind a “more” link. PostTruncate tracks exactly where that cutoff falls so your opening line — the part visible in the feed — says what you actually need it to say.
The dashboard also monitors hashtag count in real time. Instagram silently fails to publish posts that exceed 5 hashtags, so a live warning fires before you hit that wall. Spaces are always counted, matching Instagram’s own behavior.
Instagram Caption Character Counter
Word count, readability, and platform analytics
Beyond platform limits, PostTruncate also counts words, sentences, paragraphs, and symbols — all updating live as you type. It’s useful for SEO meta descriptions, documentation reviews, or any writing workflow where you need more than a raw character tally.
The dashboard handles multilingual text correctly, including CJK scripts where character count carries different semantic weight. Whether you’re writing in English, German, Japanese, or Chinese, the counts reflect what the target platform will actually see.
