Google truncates your meta description at ~155–160 characters on desktop, ~130 on mobile. The number you aim for is 150 — one target that fits both screens and leaves your call-to-action intact.
Why the exact number moves
Google truncates meta descriptions by pixel width, not character count. Wide characters (W, M) eat more space than narrow ones (i, l). So the 160-character limit is an average — a description full of W's truncates sooner, a description full of i's goes longer. For practical purposes: 150 characters is safe, 155–160 is living on the edge, anything past 160 will get cut.
Mobile is stricter
Mobile SERP displays cut off around 130 characters. For a site where most traffic comes from mobile (most sites, in 2026), that's the number to actually care about. A description that fits desktop but gets truncated on mobile is only half-working.
Google rewrites most of them anyway
Studies consistently find Google rewrites meta descriptions in around 60% of SERPs — often picking a snippet from the page body that matches the query better than the meta description does. Your meta description is a recommendation, not a contract. Write it as an honest preview of the page and trust Google to do its thing.
The practical formula
A strong meta description: first 50 chars earn the click, the next 50 deliver the hook, the last 50 land the call-to-action. Anything past 150 characters is at risk of being cut and wasted.
Live character count with and without spaces. Watch the counter tick as you trim.