More than just a character count
Say you’re writing a tweet and you need to know if it’s under 280 characters. Easy enough. But what if you also want to see which letters you’re using most, maybe you’re doing a cryptography exercise or just curious about your writing patterns? That’s where this tool earns its keep.
It counts everything: letters, digits, spaces, punctuation, symbols. You get the total, the count without spaces, plus word and line counts. But the real standout is the character frequency table: a sorted breakdown of every unique character and how many times it shows up.
What’s included
- Total character count (spaces included) and a separate count without spaces
- Word count and line count alongside the character stats
- A frequency table sorted by how often each character appears
- Everything updates as you type, no button to click
- Completely client-side. Your text stays on your device.
Getting started
Paste your text into the input area. That’s literally it. The stats appear above the input and update live. Scroll down for the frequency breakdown.
Here’s a practical example: paste your meta description draft and make sure it stays under 160 characters. Or check a tweet draft against the 280-character limit. The frequency table might also reveal that you’re overusing exclamation marks, guilty as charged, honestly.
When you’ll reach for this
Social media posting: Twitter/X caps at 280 characters, Instagram captions at 2,200, LinkedIn posts at 3,000, YouTube titles at 100. Quick paste, quick check.
SEO work: title tags should stay under 60 characters, meta descriptions under 160. This tool plus the Word Counter covers your content audit basics.
SMS messages: 160 characters per segment. Go over that and your message gets split, which can look messy on the receiving end.
Cryptanalysis: frequency analysis is literally how you crack substitution ciphers. In English, “e” is the most common letter, then “t”, “a”, “o”. Paste some ciphertext and see what jumps out.
Database and form limits: need to check if a string fits in a VARCHAR(255) column? Faster than counting by hand.
One tip: most platforms count spaces as characters. Unless you know otherwise, go by the total count, not the “without spaces” number.
Questions people ask
Are spaces counted?
Yes, in the total count. There’s a separate “Without Spaces” number too. Twitter, Instagram, SMS, they all count spaces, so the total is usually what matters.
What’s the frequency table good for?
Lots of things. Cryptography exercises, spotting overused characters in your writing, analyzing text composition for linguistics research, or just satisfying curiosity. In typical English prose, “e” dominates, followed by “t” and “a.”
How’s this different from Word Counter?
Character Counter goes deeper on the character level with the frequency table. Word Counter focuses on words, sentences, paragraphs, and reading time. They complement each other well.
Is this private?
Yes. JavaScript runs the whole thing in your browser. Nothing gets uploaded or logged.