Character counter

Check the character count of reports, essays, application documents and social media posts. Counts update as you type, and if you enter a character limit, the number of characters left is shown too. Your text is processed in your browser and never sent anywhere.

Your text is counted in your browser and never sent anywhere. It is not kept after you close the page.

Characters (including spaces and line breaks)

0characters

Characters (excluding line breaks)

0characters

Characters (excluding spaces and line breaks)

0characters

Detailed counts

Lines
0
Lines (excluding blank lines)
0
Paragraphs (separated by blank lines)
0
Japanese manuscript paper (400-character sheets)
0
Full-width characters
0
Half-width characters
0
Characters (half-width counted as 0.5)
0
Words
0
Character count for X (formerly Twitter)
0 / 280
Bytes (UTF-8)
0 bytes
Bytes (Shift_JIS)
0 bytes

Character types

Hiragana
0
Katakana
0
Kanji
0
Latin letters
0
Digits
0
Symbols and other
0
Spaces
0
Line breaks
0

Settings

Each character as it appears is counted as one (an emoji sequence also counts as one). A line break counts as one character and as 1 byte (LF) in the byte counts. Japanese manuscript paper uses 20 characters per line, and punctuation marks and closing brackets that would fall at the start of a line are counted at the end of the previous line. The X character count is an estimate that counts full-width characters as 2, half-width characters as 1 and URLs as 23. The word count is the number of words in text that separates words with spaces, as English does (for Japanese text it is only a rough guide).

How to use

  1. 1

    Enter your text

    Type or paste your text into the box.

  2. 2

    Check the character count

    As you type, the tool shows the number of characters including spaces and line breaks, excluding line breaks, and excluding spaces and line breaks. The number of lines, Japanese manuscript paper sheets, bytes and more are shown alongside.

  3. 3

    Compare with a limit

    Enter a number in “Character limit” in the settings to see how many characters are left or how many are over the limit.

How characters are counted

Each character as it appears is counted as one. Emoji sequences (such as family emoji) and a “が” written as “か” followed by a separate voiced sound mark also count as one character. A line break counts as one character, and spaces include half-width spaces, full-width spaces and tabs. Half-width characters are letters, digits, symbols, half-width katakana and the like; full-width characters are all other characters.

Japanese manuscript paper is counted at 20 characters per line, moving to the next line at each line break. Punctuation marks and closing brackets that would fall at the start of a line are placed at the end of the previous line (burasage). Paragraph indents are not added automatically, so type a full-width space where you want an indent. The character count for X (formerly Twitter) counts full-width characters such as Japanese as 2, half-width characters as 1 and URLs as 23, with a limit of 280.

Specifications of this tool

Input
Text in any language
Output
None (character, line and byte counts are shown on the page)
Limits
No character limit
  • Free, no sign-up, no app to install
  • Text is never uploaded (processed in your browser)

Frequently asked questions

Are spaces and line breaks included in the character count?

Three counts are shown side by side. “Including spaces and line breaks” counts every character, “Excluding line breaks” leaves out only line breaks, and “Excluding spaces and line breaks” leaves out both spaces and line breaks. Which count to use depends on where you are submitting, so check their requirements.

How are manuscript paper sheets counted?

Using 20 characters per line and 20 lines per sheet (400 characters), the tool counts the lines you would use if each line break started a new line. Punctuation marks and closing brackets that would fall at the start of a line are placed at the end of the previous line. Title and name lines and paragraph indents are counted as they appear in your text, so the result may differ by a few lines from a sheet written by hand. You can also switch to 200-character sheets in the settings.

Why does it differ from Word's character count?

Because the counting rules differ. Word's “Characters (no spaces)” is close to this tool's “Excluding spaces and line breaks”, and “Characters (with spaces)” is close to “Excluding line breaks”. How many characters an emoji sequence counts as also differs between programs.

Is my text sent to a server?

No. Characters are counted in your browser, and the text you enter is never sent anywhere. The text is not kept after you close the page. This page does not send processing statistics either.