X (Twitter) Character Counter

The tweet character limit has been 280 since November 2017, when Twitter raised it from 140 (X Blog). X now has several limits depending on what you're writing and which account you have:

• Standard post (tweet): 280 characters (X developer docs).
• X Premium post: up to 25,000 characters (X Help).
• Replies and quote posts: the same limits as posts, 280 or 25,000 with Premium.
• Bio: 160 characters (X Help).
• Display name: 50 characters (X Help).
• Username (@handle): 15 characters (same page).

This counter checks posts, replies and quotes. For a bio or display name, the "Characters" box gives you the plain count to compare against 160 or 50.

A normal character count and X's character count often disagree. That's because X uses weighted counting: some characters cost 1, others cost 2, and links have a fixed price. The rules, from X's developer documentation and the twitter-text configuration it points to for exact character ranges:

• Latin letters, numbers, spaces and common punctuation count as 1. That includes accented letters like é and ñ, curly quotes, and the en and em dash.
• Emoji count as 2. Combined emoji, like a family or an emoji with a skin tone, still count as 2 in total.
• Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters count as 2. A post written entirely in CJK fits about 140 characters.
• Every link counts as 23, however long or short it is, because X wraps links in its t.co shortener.
• Images, videos and GIFs count as 0.
• The @usernames X adds automatically at the start of a reply don't count. Mentions you type yourself do.

This Twitter character counter applies the same rules, so the number you see is the number X uses.

X doesn't have a word limit. Only the weighted character count matters. The counter still shows your word count because it's useful when you're drafting: if you're turning a paragraph from a blog post into a tweet, the word count tells you quickly how much has to go.

As a rough guide, English text averages around five characters per word plus a space, so a full 280-character post usually lands somewhere around 45 to 55 words. Short words, numbers and emoji change that a lot, which is why you should trust the X count, not the word count, before you post.

• Put the point first. People decide in the first line whether to keep reading.
• Cut filler words. "Really", "just", "very" and "in order to" are free characters.
• Use numerals. "3" costs 1; "three" costs 5.
• Move links to the end, or to a reply. A link costs 23 wherever it is, but at the end it doesn't break up your sentence.
• Don't stack emoji. Five emoji cost 10 characters and rarely add 10 characters of meaning.
• Check after every edit. Swapping one word for an emoji or pasting a link changes the count more than you'd think.
• Thread or long post? On a standard account, split long ideas into a thread. With Premium, a single long post keeps everything in one place.

X Premium subscribers can post up to 25,000 characters, and they can write long posts as replies and quotes too. Everyone can read a long post, but only Premium subscribers can create one (X Help).

The counter here tracks both limits. Under 280, the bar shows how much room is left in a standard post. Over 280, it tells you the post needs Premium. Over 25,000, it tells you the post is too long for any account.

If you post to X along with other networks, you've probably rewritten the same caption three times to fit each one. ViralFarm lets you write one post and adjust the caption per channel, so your X version can be a tight 280 while LinkedIn gets the long one.

ViralFarm counts X captions with the same weighted rules as this tool, and it publishes long posts for accounts with X Premium. Schedule to X, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Threads, Facebook and YouTube from one queue, or from Claude or ChatGPT through the MCP server.