We study the relationship between potential equivalence and character theory; we observe that potential equivalence of a representation rho is determined by an equality of an m-power character g -> Tr(rho(g(m))) for some natural number m. Using this, we extend Faltings' finiteness criteria to determine the equivalence of two P-adic, semisimple representations of the absolute Galois group of a number field, to the context of potential equivalence. We also discuss finiteness results for twist unramified representations.