How to use it
Paste your draft into the box above. You get a live character count (spaces and line breaks count), a word count, and a rough line estimate based on wrapping around 60 characters per line. Keep an eye on the bar as you near 1,300 characters. That is the see more marker this tool is built around. Once you cross it, the truncated panel shows what someone in the feed is likely to see before they expand. The other panel keeps the whole post so you can compare without guessing.
If you can, write in three passes. First, get the story down without worrying about length. Second, fix the opening so the truncated preview still makes sense on its own. Third, cut the middle filler so the expand rewards the click instead of repeating the hook. When it feels right, copy and paste into LinkedIn.
Nothing here is stored on a server. The counter runs in your browser, so you can iterate privately before you publish. Clear the field if you are on a shared computer.
The numbers people mix up
People talk about LinkedIn length as if there is one number. There are a few, and they do different jobs.
Historically, some feed surfaces truncated previews around roughly 140 characters. That short window is why your opening lines matter. A lot of people decide whether to expand from the first beat alone. Soft line one, and the rest of the post never gets a fair shot.
Separately, the in-post see more expand for longer posts commonly sits around 1,300 characters. That is the marker this tool shows. Crossing it is fine. Plenty of strong posts put the payoff after see more on purpose. The problem is burying the point before the fold with no reason to click, or filling the truncated view with throat-clearing that says nothing.
Creators also cite about 3,000 characters as a practical upper bound for many standard posts. Limits can shift by format and over time, so treat 3,000 as a planning ceiling, then check LinkedIn's composer. If your draft is climbing past that range, ask whether it wants to be a long-form article, a carousel, or a tighter narrative instead. Longer is not automatically more thoughtful. Often it is three posts wearing one coat.
Working with the cutoff
Put the conflict, insight, or specific outcome in the first two or three lines. Vague openers like "I've been thinking about leadership lately" rarely earn the expand. Specific ones do: a number, a failed experiment, a customer sentence, or a sharp claim you can defend in the comments.
Use short lines and white space. Dense paragraphs look longer than they are on mobile, and they make the fold feel earlier even when the character count is fine. Break before a reveal. Leave room after a question. If you need bullets for scannability, try the free LinkedIn text formatter for Unicode bullets, then paste back here to re-check length. Styled characters still count toward the total.
Hooks deserve their own practice. For concrete opener patterns, read LinkedIn hooks that get engagement. Pair a strong hook with a length plan and you stop guessing whether the fold is working against you. A simple test: cover everything after the first 1,300 characters and ask if the visible part still earns a click from someone who does not know you.
One more habit that helps: check the truncated panel at a phone-width window when you can. Desktop makes everything look more forgiving. The same draft that feels fine on a wide screen can look like a wall of text before see more on a phone. If the preview feels cramped, add line breaks before you cut meaning.
When a counter is enough
A character counter solves one job: length awareness before you publish. If you already know what to say and only need to shape the draft, stay here. If blank-page days are the real bottleneck, length is not your product problem. You need a repeatable way to get from idea to reviewed draft without starting from zero every Tuesday.
linkedinpost.ai is built for the rest of that loop: voice-aware drafts, multi-agent review, calendars, and approval when more than one person touches the post. See features for what ships today, and pricing when you want the plan picture. You can start free when you are ready. Until then, use this tool with no signup and keep it bookmarked for the last check before you hit publish.