Technically, there are tens of thousands of Chinese characters. Large dictionaries list 50,000+ characters, but many of them are extremely rare, historical, or no longer used.
In reality, you need far fewer to function in daily life:
~1,000 characters → basic understanding of simple texts
~2,000–2,500 characters → you can read most newspapers and everyday content
~3,000–4,000 characters → comfortable reading level for most modern texts