The 280-character limit
Twitter’s standard tweet limit is 280 characters. Twitter Blue / X Premium subscribers can post long-form notes up to 25,000 characters. The counter supports both with a mode toggle.
URL counting: the t.co rule
Every link in a tweet (http:// or https://) is automatically shortened by Twitter’s t.co URL service when the tweet is posted. Regardless of whether your URL is 20 or 200 characters, it always counts as exactly 23 characters in the character count.
Examples:
| URL | Display | Counts as |
|---|---|---|
https://x.com | https://x.com | 23 chars |
https://example.com/a/very/long/path?with=parameters&q=1 | t.co/xXxXxXxX | 23 chars |
The counter detects any http:// or https:// URL in your text and substitutes 23 characters for counting purposes.
Emoji counting
Each emoji code point counts as one character for Twitter’s basic counting. However, compound emoji — those that use Unicode Zero Width Joiner (ZWJ) sequences, like 👨👩👧👦 (family emoji) or skin tone modifiers like 👍🏽 — may count differently depending on the platform.
The counter provides an approximation that matches Twitter’s counter for the vast majority of common content.
Reading the counter display
- Remaining shows characters left before the limit. It turns amber below 20 and red when over limit.
- Ring progress fills clockwise; it turns red on overflow.
- Stats grid shows word count, line count, sentence count, URL count, and emoji count at a glance.
Long-form posts
In long-form mode (25,000 char limit), the URL substitution rule still applies — every link counts as 23 characters. Use this mode when drafting X Premium articles or threads that will be published as long-form notes.
Practical tips
- A tweet with one URL has 257 characters of text space (280 − 23).
- A tweet with two URLs has 234 characters (280 − 46).
- Hashtags are just text — no special counting rule applies.
- Newlines (line breaks) count as 1 character each.
- Spaces count as 1 character each, including trailing spaces.