Twitter/X 280 Character Limit: How Characters Are Counted

Twitter's Character Counting Rules

Twitter's 280-character limit does not simply use JavaScript's .length. Twitter uses its own weighted counting system based on Unicode ranges, and URLs have special handling.

Twitter's Counting Rules

Character Type	Weight
ASCII (U+0000–U+10FF)	1
Most other characters	1
CJK characters (U+2E80–U+9FFF, etc.)	2
CJK symbols and punctuation	2
Emoji	varies (usually 2)
URLs	23 (fixed, regardless of actual length)

Examples

"Hello World" (11 ASCII chars)
  Twitter count: 11
  JS .length:    11

"こんにちは" (5 Japanese chars)
  Twitter count: 10  (5 × 2)
  JS .length:    5

"Check https://example.com/very-long-url" (40 chars)
  Twitter count: 29  (6 + 23 for URL)
  JS .length:    40

Why This Matters for Developers

If you are building a Twitter client or post scheduler:

1. Do not use .length for the character counter
2. Use Twitter's text parsing library (twitter-text) for accurate counting
3. Count CJK as double to avoid posts being rejected
4. URLs always count as 23 regardless of length, because Twitter wraps them in t.co

Emoji Counting

Most emoji count as 2 characters on Twitter, regardless of their code point complexity:

"😀" (simple emoji)        Twitter: 2, .length: 2
"👨‍👩‍👧" (family emoji)  Twitter: 2, .length: 8
"🇯🇵" (flag emoji)        Twitter: 2, .length: 4

This means complex emoji sequences are actually "cheaper" on Twitter relative to their byte size.

Maximizing Character Usage

To fit the most content in a tweet:

• Use ASCII where possible (1 character each)
• Long URLs are fine (always 23 characters)
• Emoji are relatively efficient (2 characters for often complex meaning)
• CJK text uses characters at 2x rate