This counter shows the encoding, the number of segments and the units used, which is exactly what bulk SMS providers bill on.
How TallyWords counts
Words are runs of letters or numbers; contractions and hyphenated words count once. Characters are counted as you see them, so an emoji or an accented letter is one character. Sentences end at a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis, and paragraphs are separated by blank lines.
Readability uses the Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level and Gunning Fog formulas. Reading time assumes 238 words per minute and speaking time 150 words per minute. Platform meters use each network's own counting rules where they differ from a plain character count.
Private by design
TallyWords has no server-side processing. Your text stays in this browser tab and in an autosave on this device only. Clear it at any time with the Clear button.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my SMS limit 70 instead of 160?
Your message contains a character outside GSM-7, such as an emoji or a curly apostrophe, so it is sent as UCS-2 Unicode with 70 characters per segment.
What is a segment?
Long messages are split into parts. Concatenated GSM-7 parts carry 153 characters each and Unicode parts 67, because some space is used to stitch them together.
Which characters count as two?
In GSM-7, the characters ^ { } [ ] ~ | € and backslash use an escape code and count as two.
Does TallyWords work offline?
Once the page has loaded, all counting and cleanup works without a connection, because nothing depends on a server.
Is TallyWords free?
Yes. Every tool is free with no sign-up and no limits on text length.