Character Counter
Count characters, words, lines and UTF-8 bytes of your text in real time, with or without spaces. Emoji and combined characters are counted as a single character. Your text stays on your device.
Characters (with spaces)
0
- Characters (with spaces)
- 0
- Characters (no spaces)
- 0
- Words
- 0
- Lines
- 0
- Paragraphs
- 0
- Bytes (UTF-8)
- 0
Your text is processed entirely on your device and is never sent to a server.
How to use
Paste or type your text and the character, word, line and byte counts update instantly — there is no submit button. Turn off "include spaces and line breaks" to switch the headline figure to the count excluding whitespace.
Common uses are concrete: checking an essay or assignment against a word limit, trimming an article title or SEO meta description to around 120 characters, tightening a résumé bullet to fit one line, or confirming the length of a post before publishing. It is built for the moment you need to check length before submitting.
There is more than one way to count text
The same text can have different counts depending on what you measure. English writing is usually measured in words, while character limits matter for titles, meta descriptions and form fields. Whether you include spaces also changes the number — word processors show "characters" and "characters excluding spaces" separately. This tool shows characters with and without spaces alongside the word count, so you can read whichever your destination requires.
Have you seen an emoji or accented letter counted as several characters? That happens because computers count text in three layers. The count programmers often use (UTF-16 code units) counts a single emoji as 2, and the family emoji 👨👩👧👦 as 11. By code points the family emoji is 7. But what a person sees as one character is a grapheme cluster, and by that measure it is 1. This tool counts grapheme clusters by default, so emoji, combined characters (e + accent), flags 🇯🇵 and skin-tone variants all count as one. When a form or database rejects your input for length, it is usually counting code points or UTF-16 instead. Byte counts here use UTF-8, where ASCII is 1 byte, most CJK characters are about 3, and emoji are 4 or more.
FAQ
- Which is the "correct" count — with or without spaces?
- It depends on where you are submitting. Word processors show both, manuscript counts include indentation, and form limits depend on the system. This tool shows both at once, so you can read whichever matches your destination's rule.
- Why are emoji or accented letters counted as several characters?
- Because text can be counted in different ways. This tool counts grapheme clusters (what a person sees as one character) by default, so emoji and combined characters count as one. Some systems count code points or UTF-16 units instead, treating an emoji as two or more — that is why a form sometimes rejects it.
- What are byte counts for, and do they differ in other encodings?
- Byte counts help with database column lengths and email or API size limits. This tool uses UTF-8, where most CJK characters are about 3 bytes. Other encodings differ — Shift_JIS uses 2 bytes for full-width characters — so the same text can have a different byte count.
- Is my text uploaded anywhere?
- No. Everything is calculated in your browser and nothing you type is sent to a server, so you can safely check private or unpublished text.