Do spaces count as characters?

Yes, in every limit that matters — social platforms, database columns, form fields. Both figures are shown here so you never have to guess which one a validator is using.

Is a character the same as a byte?

No, not in UTF-8. Latin letters are one byte, accented characters two, most non-Latin scripts three, and many emoji four. A VARCHAR(n) limit can count bytes or characters depending on the database.

Why does my text show fewer characters than another counter?

Different tools handle line breaks and emoji differently: CRLF is one character here but two bytes, and a family emoji built from several code points may be reported as one grapheme elsewhere.

Does this upload my text?

No. The count is computed in your browser tab as you type, which is why it updates instantly and keeps working with no network.

Text & Data Ready to use

Character Counter

Count characters with and without spaces as you type, plus words, sentences, lines and reading time. Everything stays in your browser.

Text

All statistics are computed instantly, entirely in your browser.

Focus metric

The selected metric is highlighted first.

This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your input never leaves your device.

About Character Counter

Character limits are enforced on two different counts, and mixing them up is how a submission gets truncated. Most platforms count every character including spaces; some style guides and password rules care about content alone. This tool shows both at once — characters with spaces, characters without — alongside words, unique words, sentences, paragraphs, lines, average word length and the longest word, so a 280-character post and a form field with a 64-byte limit can be checked from the same panel.

Counting is done by Unicode code point, which is the honest way. A two-word emoji or an accented character built from a letter plus a combining mark is not inflated into several characters the way a byte count would report it, and CJK text counts sensibly too.

The numbers recompute on every keystroke, locally, in your browser — nothing is transmitted, nothing is stored, and the page keeps working offline. For a limit measured in bytes rather than characters, remember that non-Latin text costs more: one character here can be two, three or four UTF-8 bytes.