Twitter / X Character Counter — Free 280-Char Tweet Counter

The exact character limits on X (Twitter)

A standard post on X (formerly Twitter) is capped at 280 characters. That budget counts every letter, space, punctuation mark, emoji, and line break shown in the compose box — reach 281 and the Post button locks. Accounts with an X Premium subscription can publish long posts of up to 25,000 characters, but the 280 ceiling still applies to everyone else, and to most replies and quote posts.

Not everything you attach spends that budget. Photos, videos, GIFs, and polls cost zero characters, and when you quote-post, the tweet you are quoting does not eat into your 280 either. What does count are @mentions and #hashtags placed inside the body — though the handles shown in the "Replying to…" line above a reply are free.

Why links always cost 23 characters

Here is the rule that catches almost everyone: every URL is wrapped in X's t.co shortener and counts as exactly 23 characters, no matter how long or short the real address is. A five-character link and a 200-character link both spend 23. PostTruncate applies the same weighted-length math X's own API uses, so paste three links and the counter deducts 69 characters instantly — the number you see is the number X will enforce.

The emoji and non-Latin trap

X does not count every character as one. It uses weighted counting: standard Latin letters, digits, and common punctuation weigh 1, but characters in CJK ranges (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) weigh 2, and most emoji count as 2 as well. A tweet that looks like 150 visible glyphs can therefore hit the 280 ceiling far sooner than you expect. The counter on this page mirrors that weighting, so an emoji-heavy or Japanese draft shows its true cost as you type.

Common truncation mistakes on X

• Pasting a long link near the limit. Because the link still costs 23 characters, a draft that looks like it fits suddenly will not post.
• Trusting the visible glyph count. Emoji and non-Latin scripts weigh 2, so the compose box fills faster than the letters suggest.
• Splitting a thread by hand. Manual breaks slice sentences mid-word or open a tweet with a dangling "and," confusing anyone who joins the thread halfway.
• Burying the hook. Long Premium posts collapse behind a "Show more" link in the timeline, so a weak first line costs you the click before anyone expands it.
• Stacking hashtags at the end. Three or four trailing tags are the most common reason a finished tweet tips just over 280.

When one tweet isn't enough

If an idea genuinely needs more room, chain it. Threads publish as a connected sequence with no length ceiling, and the engagement data is clear that tweets of 71–100 characters earn the most replies and retweets — the 280 limit is a ceiling, not a target. Paste your full draft into the editor above and the thread splitter divides it into numbered, sub-280 segments that break on sentence boundaries, so every tweet reads as a complete thought before you copy it to X.