Check Twitter/X Character Limit — 280 Characters

Twitter/X 280-Character Limit

Twitter (now X) limits standard tweets to 280 characters. Understanding exactly how Twitter counts characters is essential for crafting posts that fit perfectly.

How Twitter Counts Characters

Twitter uses a weighted character counting system based on Unicode ranges:

function twitterCharCount(text) {
  let count = 0;
  for (const char of text) {
    const code = char.codePointAt(0);
    // CJK and some Unicode ranges count as 2
    if (code > 0x2000) {
      count += 2;
    } else {
      count += 1;
    }
  }
  return count;
}

Most Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic characters count as 1 character. CJK characters (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), and many other Unicode characters above U+2000 count as 2 characters. This means a tweet in Japanese can contain about 140 characters, not 280.

URL Handling

All URLs in tweets are wrapped by Twitter's t.co URL shortener and count as exactly 23 characters regardless of the actual URL length:

• https://example.com → 23 characters
• https://very-long-domain.com/extremely/long/path?with=many&query=params → 23 characters

This means a long URL does not consume more of your character budget than a short one.

Special Elements

• @mentions — counted at face value (e.g., @devtoolbox = 12 characters)
• Hashtags — counted at face value including the # symbol
• Emojis — most count as 2 characters (they are above U+2000)
• Newlines — each newline counts as 1 character

Maximizing Your Tweet

Strategies for fitting content into 280 characters:

1. Use URL shorteners wisely — all URLs count as 23 chars anyway
2. Abbreviate carefully — "w/" instead of "with", "b/c" instead of "because"
3. Thread long content — split across multiple tweets using the reply feature
4. Leverage alt text — move descriptive text to image alt text (doesn't count)

Character Limit History

Twitter launched in 2006 with a 140-character limit (designed to fit in a single SMS message with room for a username). In November 2017, the limit doubled to 280 characters for most languages. Premium subscribers on X can now post up to 25,000 characters.