Why does this count differently from my text editor?
YouTube's help pages count characters; its API counts the description in UTF-8 bytes, so non-Latin text runs out sooner than the number suggests.
YouTube Character Counter
Count a post the way YouTube counts it, not the way your text editor does.
Free, no sign-up, and it runs entirely in your browser. Limits checked 2026-08-31.
Post — YouTube0 / 5,000
5,000 left.
0
Characters, YouTube rule
0
Words
0
Sentences
0
Paragraphs
0
Lines
0
Hashtags
0
Mentions
0
Links
0
Emoji
0s
Read time
at 225 wpm
How YouTube counts
PublishedYouTube's help pages count characters; its API counts the description in UTF-8 bytes, so non-Latin text runs out sooner than the number suggests.
The video description. The API measures this in bytes rather than characters. Source.
How it works
YouTube's help pages count characters; its API counts the description in UTF-8 bytes, so non-Latin text runs out sooner than the number suggests.
Characters are counted as grapheme clusters — what a reader would point at and call one character. An emoji is one, an accented letter typed as two code points is one, and a flag is one. Your text editor's own count disagrees with all three.
The dropdown switches between the fields each network publishes a separate limit for, because the limit on a bio is not the limit on a post.
Questions
Is the count exact?
The counting rule is exact and comes from the platform's own documentation. Where a network publishes no figure for a field, the page says so rather than showing a confident number — that is the honest state of several of these, and pretending otherwise would be the easy thing to do.
What happens to the text I paste in?
Nothing. There is no server behind these pages — the tool is JavaScript running in your tab, so what you type stays in the browser and is never sent anywhere, by us or by anyone else.
Is it really free, and is there a catch?
Free, with no sign-up, no limit and no watermark. These tools cost us nothing to run because they run on your computer rather than ours. We build them because the people who need them are the people who might eventually want the product they sit next to — that is the whole arrangement, and it does not require anything from you.
The same tool, other networks
Plan it once, ship it everywhere.
Checking one post against one network by hand is fine. Checking a quarter of them across eight is the job Influenar does — every draft written against your brand kit, laid out on a calendar, and sized for the channel it is going to before you ever see it.