Character & Word Counter
Paste your text and see characters, words, sentences, lines, paragraphs, UTF-8 and UTF-16 bytes, and the time it takes to read or say it. Emoji and accented letters count as one character.
Runs in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
Statistics
How to use it
- Type or paste your text. The numbers update as you write.
- Read the counts. Characters are counted the way people see them, so 👨👩👧👦 is one.
- Use the byte counts to check limits such as database columns or API fields.
Frequently asked questions
How are characters counted?
As user-perceived characters (grapheme clusters, using Intl.Segmenter): a letter with an accent, a flag or a family emoji each count as one. “Code points” is the Unicode count, which is higher for emoji sequences.
What is the difference between UTF-8 and UTF-16 bytes?
UTF-8 uses 1 byte for ASCII and up to 4 for other characters, and is the encoding of the web, JSON and most databases. UTF-16 uses 2 bytes per code unit (4 for emoji) and is what JavaScript and Windows use inside. Limits like VARCHAR(255) in MySQL count characters, not bytes, but file and API limits often count UTF-8 bytes.
How is reading time calculated?
About 238 words per minute for silent reading and 150 for speaking aloud, which are common averages for adult English readers. Treat it as an estimate.
How are words counted in Chinese or Japanese?
Those languages have no spaces, so the browser’s word segmenter is used. The result is a good approximation, not an exact count.
Is my text sent anywhere?
No. Everything is counted in your browser.