One counter for Common App, Twitter, SMS, LinkedIn, and SEO meta.
Different platforms count different things. Common App caps essays by words. Twitter and SMS cap by characters. LinkedIn summary uses chars-with-spaces. SEO meta descriptions are scored on rendered chars (≈ 155). This tool shows all of them at once so you stop pasting between five different counters.
Common App essay — 650 words is a hard cap, 250 is the floor
The Common App personal statement allows up to 650 words and discourages submissions below 250. The progress bar turns orange at 80% (520 words) and red at 95% (618 words). When you exceed the limit, the overflow is highlighted in red so you know which final phrase to trim — usually the one before submission anxiety made you add it.
UC PIQs — 350 words each, 4 of 8 prompts
UC Personal Insight Questions (PIQs) cap each response at 350 words. You answer 4 out of 8. Use the UC preset for any one prompt; the limit and "words" mode are pre-configured.
Reading time estimate (≈ 250 wpm)
For blog drafts and LinkedIn posts, a reading-time estimate at 250 words per minute helps you size content. 300 words ≈ 1 min. 1,500 words ≈ 6 min — a typical newsletter ceiling.
SEO meta description (155 chars) and title (60 chars)
Google truncates meta descriptions around 155–160 chars on desktop and slightly shorter on mobile. Titles are truncated near 60 chars (about 580 px). Stay inside both limits to avoid cropped snippets in search results.
SMS character math — why 160?
SMS uses 7-bit GSM encoding which fits 160 characters per segment. Use even one non-GSM character (most emoji, or curly quotes), and the message switches to UCS-2 with a 70-char limit per segment. This counter shows chars only — confirm the encoding with your SMS provider.
FAQ
- What counts as a "word"?
- A whitespace-separated token. Hyphenated phrases ("state-of-the-art") count as one word. Most admissions software follows this convention.
- Are emoji counted as one character?
- By codepoint. Simple emoji (😀) = 1. ZWJ sequences like 👨👩👧 use multiple codepoints — your platform may count them differently.
- Where is my text stored?
- It isn't. All counting runs in your browser. The "Copy URL" button only shares your limit settings, never the text body.
- Why does my SMS provider show a different count?
- SMS encoding switches to UCS-2 (70-char segments) when non-GSM characters are present. This counter shows raw character count, not segment count.