Twitter’s unique design only allows up to 280 characters per tweet. This forces users to be both creative and succinct with their messages, making each tweet potent. So, how do you use your character count to the best of your abilities? Is there a Twitter character counter to help you stay under the maximum? This is the guide for you. 

Twitter Character Count Rules

As you may be aware, Twitter has always had some pretty strict Twitter word count and character count rules. With that being said, how many characters are allowed in a tweet? The answer is 280 characters.

Toward the end of the year 2017, Twitter upped its tweet character count from 140 characters to 280 characters. This change helped writers everywhere pack twice as much into a tweet than was previously allowed.

While brevity is still the name of the game with tweets, having the ability to go to 280 characters is very appreciated, as writers can use complete sentences now and add more value and context to the social content they’re putting out.

Do Spaces Count as Characters on Twitter?

This is a good question since most character counter tools give you both the “characters with spaces” and “characters without spaces” results. But in regards to whether or not spaces count as characters on Twitter, the answer is Yes. Spaces between words count towards the 280-character Twitter limit.

Do Links Count as Characters on Twitter?

One question commonly asked is whether or not links, or URLs, count towards the overall 280-character count allowed by Twitter. The answer is yes, mostly. URLs go against the character count as they take up to 23 characters.

Does Replying to Someone Count as Characters on Twitter?

When using an @ to reply to someone, the @-name does not go against the overall character count. So the answer is no, it does not count. Reply away!

Best Twitter Character Counter

As a writer, the only way to check a tweet outside of Twitter was to highlight the tweet in Microsoft Word, go to the word count at the bottom and click it, and then look at the “characters with spaces” section. While this doesn’t take too terribly long, not every writer uses Microsoft Word. This is where a free, online character count tool can really come in handy.

The one that we’ve picked is twittercharactercounter.com.

This free Twitter character count tool gives writers who don’t have, or who don’t want to use, Microsoft Word a way to quickly check character counts without having to log into Twitter. The character count tool does not require registration to use and is as easy as copying and pasting in your tweet to see how many characters you have used of the 280 characters available to you.

If you go over the allotted characters allowed, the Twitter character count tool eliminates any characters above the 280 character limit so you get a real-time view of what your tweet will look like. Once you have your tweet looking the way you want to, you can copy and paste from the tweet character counter into Twitter, or click their “Pass on to Twitter” button which will reroute you to Twitter to post your tweet.

Other Word and Character Count Tools

While there are many other character counter tools out there, this is one tweet counter we like specifically for Twitter since it gives you a preview of how your tweet will look as you write it. That being said, we’ve compiled other character counters and word counters you can use for general writing. You can find a list of word count tools and character counter tools on some of our other blogs.