Character Counter
Count characters (with and without spaces), words and lines instantly.
How to use the Character Counter
- Type or paste your text.
- The character, word and line counts update live.
About the Character Counter
“Character” sounds precise, but it is one of the most ambiguous words in computing, and that ambiguity is the reason a counter is worth using. This tool counts UTF-16 code units — the same measure JavaScript and Java use for string length. For ordinary Latin text it matches what you see: one letter, one character. Beyond that it diverges in ways that surprise people. A plain emoji such as 😀 counts as 2. A flag like 🇬🇧 counts as 4, because it is two joined regional indicator symbols. An emoji with a skin-tone modifier also counts as 4 — several code points a reader sees as one glyph. An accented letter may count as 1 or 2 depending on whether it was typed as a single precomposed character or as a letter plus a combining accent.
This matters because platforms count differently from each other. SMS is the classic trap: a message fits 160 characters in the GSM-7 alphabet, but a single character outside that alphabet — a curly quote pasted from Word, an emoji, any non-Latin letter — switches the whole message to UCS-2 and the limit drops to 70. Database columns are the other one: a column sized in bytes holds fewer characters than you would expect, because in UTF-8 anything beyond ASCII takes more than one byte.
The counts update as you type. “Characters (no spaces)” strips all whitespace, including tabs and line breaks, not just spaces. Lines are counted by line breaks. Everything runs in your browser. For sentences, paragraphs and reading time, use the word counter.
Frequently asked questions
Do spaces count as characters?
That depends on who is counting, so both totals are shown. The main figure includes spaces; the second strips all whitespace, including tabs and line breaks. Use whichever matches the limit you are working to.
Why does one emoji count as two characters?
Emoji sit outside the range that fits in a single UTF-16 code unit, so they are stored as a pair. Length here is measured in code units, so a plain emoji reads as 2. Flags and skin-tone emoji are built from several joined code points and count as 4.
Is a character the same as a byte?
No. In UTF-8, ASCII characters take one byte but accented letters take two, most Asian characters take three, and emoji take four. If a limit is specified in bytes rather than characters, this count will read lower than the byte size.
Why does my SMS say 70 characters instead of 160?
Because one character in the message is outside the GSM-7 alphabet. A single curly quote or emoji switches the entire message to UCS-2 encoding, which cuts the per-message limit from 160 to 70. Replacing that one character restores the higher limit.
How are lines counted?
By line breaks. A single line of text with no breaks counts as one line, and an empty box counts as zero. Word wrapping in the display does not create new lines.