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Character Counter
Paste your text to count every character: with spaces, without spaces, and broken down into letters, digits, spaces, and punctuation/symbols — plus its size in UTF-8 bytes, which is what many databases and APIs actually limit.
How it works
Characters are counted as JavaScript string units (UTF-16 code units — the same count most editors and browsers report). Letters are Unicode letters, digits are 0–9, spaces are all whitespace (spaces, tabs, line breaks), and punctuation & symbols is everything left over. UTF-8 bytes are counted with a real UTF-8 encoder: plain English text is 1 byte per character, accented letters take 2, and most emoji take 4. Worked example: "Hello, World!" has 13 characters including the space, 12 without it, 10 letters, 0 digits, 1 space, and 2 punctuation marks (the comma and the exclamation mark), and 13 UTF-8 bytes because every character is ASCII. Second check: "café" is 4 characters but 5 UTF-8 bytes, because é takes 2 bytes.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between characters with and without spaces?
With spaces counts every keystroke including spaces and line breaks; without spaces strips all whitespace first. Essay and application limits usually mean without spaces, while SMS and tweet-style limits count everything.
Why show UTF-8 bytes?
Some systems limit text by bytes, not characters — a database column or API field measured in bytes fills up faster with accented letters and emoji. A 280-byte limit holds far fewer emoji than 280 characters.
Do emoji count as one character?
Mostly: common emoji are 2 UTF-16 code units, so a strict character count may report 2 per emoji. This page counts code units, matching what browsers and most editors report.
Are line breaks characters?
Yes — each line break counts as one character in the “with spaces” total and as whitespace in the breakdown.
Is my text uploaded?
No. All counting happens in your browser; your text never leaves this page.