The X character limit, and what actually counts

Check any draft with the free tweet character counter, which counts the way X does.

X doesn't count every character as one. It uses weighted counting:

• Most Latin letters, numbers, spaces and punctuation count as 1. Accented letters like é or ñ count as 1 too.
• Line breaks count as 1 each. Spacing out a post costs a little.
• Emoji count as 2, including simple ones. Some combined emoji, like family or flag sequences, can count as more.
• Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters count as 2. In practice, that gives you about 140 of them per post.
• Images, videos and GIFs you attach don't count toward the limit.
• @usernames added automatically when you reply don't count. A mention you type into the body does.

The weighting exists because X's limit was designed around Latin text. Scripts like Chinese, Japanese and Korean pack more meaning into each character, so they count double to keep posts roughly comparable in length. Emoji count double for similar technical reasons.

X wraps every link in its own short link, so any URL counts as 23 characters, whether the original is 15 characters or 150. Long URLs don't cost you extra, and short ones don't save you anything.

A separate point: posts with external links are widely reported to get less reach. If the post can make its point without the link, put the link in a reply.

The practical effect: a post with a link and a couple of emoji has noticeably fewer than 280 characters left for words. A post in Japanese, Chinese or Korean holds about half as many characters as one in English, though each character often carries more meaning.

X Premium subscribers can publish much longer posts. In the timeline, long posts are cut off after the first few lines with a “Show more” link, so readers decide from the opening whether to expand.

That means the first 280 characters still do most of the work. Treat them as the hook. Everyone without Premium still writes to 280, and many readers prefer short posts anyway.

• Cut warm-up phrases: “I just wanted to share that”, “In my opinion”, “Here's the thing”.
• Swap long words for short ones: “use” for “utilize”, “help” for “facilitate”.
• Use numerals: “3” instead of “three”.
• Drop hashtags you added out of habit.
• Replace a link with “link below” and post it as a reply.
• Move detail into an image: a screenshot or diagram costs zero characters.

The limit exists, but the best posts rarely press against it. A post that uses 140 characters well often reads faster and leaves more room for people to react than one squeezed to 279. Use the space the idea needs.

• Write the full idea first without watching the counter.
• Cut it to the point where removing anything else would change the meaning.
• Read it on a phone-width screen. Short lines and a blank line between ideas help.
• Only then check the count.

How to write a good tweet covers the editing side in more detail.

If you keep cutting and it still doesn't fit, the idea might need more room. A thread gives each point its own tweet, and each tweet can be read alone. The free thread splitter breaks a long draft into tweets at sentence boundaries, and how to write a thread covers the structure.

In Extudio, the editor counts every tweet against 280 and can split an overlong tweet into a thread in one click. The tweet preview highlights anything past the limit, on desktop, tablet and mobile layouts.