Character Counter

Count Unicode code points, UTF-16 code units, line count, and UTF-8 byte size. Useful for limits on forms, tweets, and APIs.

  • Runs entirely in your browser
  • No data stored or sent to a server
  • Free forever — no signup
  • Instant conversion

Input and Output

Use the interactive encoder and decoder on this page to process your text.

Learn more about text

Character, Line, and Byte Counts Explained

Character Counting

When to Count Characters

Measure Unicode code points, UTF-16 code units, counts with and without spaces, line count, and UTF-8 byte size when hitting API field limits, SMS segment boundaries, database column sizes, or encoding-sensitive transport constraints.

Real-World Examples

Verify a meta description stays under 160 characters

Check UTF-8 byte size before inserting emoji into a VARCHAR(255) column

Compare with-spaces vs without-spaces counts for password or license key rules

Common Mistakes

  • Assuming code point count equals UTF-16 length or byte count — emoji uses one code point but two UTF-16 code units and up to four UTF-8 bytes
  • Counting HTML entities as one character when they represent several
  • Using character count when the platform limit is bytes (common in legacy systems)

Developer Tips

  • Node.js: Buffer.byteLength(str, 'utf8') for byte size
  • Watch byte size for JSON payloads with heavy unicode
  • Use Word Counter for paragraph and word metrics

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between characters and bytes?

Code points are Unicode characters in the string. UTF-16 code units are what JavaScript reports as string length (surrogate pairs use two). Bytes are the UTF-8 encoding size, which is larger for emoji and many non-Latin scripts.

What is the difference between without spaces and without whitespace?

Without spaces excludes only the space character. Without whitespace excludes all whitespace characters including tabs and line breaks.

How are characters without spaces calculated?

Only the space character (U+0020) is excluded. Tabs and line breaks still count toward the without-spaces total.

Does a newline count as a character?

Yes. Line breaks count toward code points, UTF-16 code units, and the without-whitespace exclusion.