About Twittermeter

Twittermeter is a small, independent site with one tool: a meter for draft posts on X. You paste what you are about to post and it reads back the numbers that matter before you press the button. Those are the weighted character count X actually uses, a reading grade, how many hashtags, mentions and links the post carries and how much room they take, whether it is mostly capital letters, how long the first line runs, and how the text wraps on a phone.

The five guides explain each reading in more depth: how X counts characters, how to write posts people can read in one pass, how many hashtags make sense, how to write a first line, and how plain language works on social media.

How the meter works

The character count follows the rules X publishes for developers. Text is normalized to Unicode NFC first. Characters in the Latin and common punctuation ranges count as 1, everything else counts as 2, every emoji counts as 2 however many code points it is built from, and every link counts as 23 because X shortens links to that length. The standard limit is 280. In Premium long-post mode the limit is 25,000 and the preview marks roughly where a timeline cuts the post off with "Show more".

The reading grade is the Flesch-Kincaid formula, which looks at words per sentence and syllables per word. The meter leaves out links, @handles and the # symbol before scoring. Syllables are counted with a rule-based estimate, so the grade can be off by a point on unusual words, and on one short sentence it isn't worth much. We say so on the dial.

Everything runs in your browser. The meter doesn't log in to X, doesn't call any API and doesn't send your draft anywhere. It works offline once the page has loaded.

What it can't tell you

The meter measures text. It can't tell you whether a post is true, kind or interesting, and it doesn't predict reach. Link detection is the weakest point: X recognizes some bare domains as links and not others, so a post with an unusual web address might count a little differently in the app. When you are within a few characters of the limit, the X composer has the final word.

Who writes it

Twittermeter is written and maintained by the Twittermeter Team, a small group of people who edit copy for a living and have spent years trimming posts to fit. We don't sell followers or engagement, we don't take payment to mention products, and there are no ads.

Not affiliated with X

Twittermeter is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to X Corp. X and Twitter are trademarks of their owner and appear here only to describe what the tool measures.

History of the domain

Twittermeter.com was relaunched in 2026 under new, independent management. The current site has no connection to earlier owners of the domain, and pages from earlier versions of the site are not part of it.

Corrections

If the meter gets a count wrong or a guide is out of date, please get in touch. The exact text that miscounted is the most useful thing you can send.