ShapelessAI← All toolsfreeno login3,000 Unicode code pointsVerified by Tal Weiss
LinkedIn character counter
Counts the way LinkedIn counts, and shows you the exact text that gets cropped. Nothing you type or attach leaves your browser.
Counted in Unicode code points: one plain character is one, and a link costs its full length.
Nothing you type or attach leaves this tab - no upload, no account, no server.
What actually costs characters on LinkedIn
LinkedIn counts Unicode code points and charges full price for a link: a 96-character campaign URL spends 96 of the 3,000, because there is no shortener in the middle. Line breaks are characters too, and the airy one-line-per-thought style people write here can cost 40 of them. What LinkedIn will not do is render markdown - it publishes plain text, so the asterisks around a pasted **heading** stay on screen as asterisks and still cost you four characters.
Three posts LinkedIn cuts
- A newsletter section pasted in wholeAbout 3,400 characters of an essay, ending on the call to action.400 characters over. The tail LinkedIn drops is the end, which is where the ask lives - the intro survives and the reason to click does not.
- Markdown that came along for the ride**Three things we learned** followed by a - bulleted list copied from a doc.Publishes with the asterisks and the hyphens visible. LinkedIn renders plain text only, so the formatting characters cost length and buy nothing.
- A tracked link in the bodyOne URL carrying utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign and utm_content.Around 120 characters for a single link. LinkedIn counts every one of them, so the tracking is paid for out of the post.
Only on LinkedIn
- Plain text only - no markdown, no rich text. Line breaks carry.
- Up to 20 images in one post, or one video, never both.
- A PDF publishes as a scrollable document carousel, which is the format that earns the dwell time here.
Questions
- Is this LinkedIn character counter free?
- Yes. There is no login and no upload: it runs entirely in your browser, and nothing you type or attach leaves your device.
- How long can a LinkedIn post be?
- 3,000 characters. Counted in Unicode code points: one plain character is one, and a link costs its full length.
- Why does my LinkedIn post look different in the feed than in the editor?
- The editor shows the whole post; the feed shows three lines. LinkedIn also renders plain text, so bold, bullets and headings pasted from a document arrive as the raw characters. What you are seeing is the feed's clamp plus the loss of formatting, and the preview here reproduces both.
- What happens if a LinkedIn post goes over the limit?
- LinkedIn crops or refuses it. The counter marks the exact tail that would be lost, so you can cut the right words instead of guessing.
Where these numbers come from: our sourced LinkedIn spec page, every figure carrying its citation and the date we last checked it.
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We built these because our own agents count against exactly these limits before they publish. Let them write the post too.