How is this different from a word counter?

Word Counter focuses on words, sentences, and reading time. Character Counter is about exact character counts — useful for hard limits like meta descriptions and SMS.

What's the difference between 'no spaces' and 'no whitespace'?

'No spaces' removes only the space character. 'No whitespace' removes spaces, tabs, line breaks, and other whitespace.

Why are UTF-8 bytes different from character count?

Many characters (emoji, accented letters, non-Latin scripts) take 2–4 bytes in UTF-8 even though they're a single character. Use UTF-8 bytes to fit text into byte-limited fields.

Text Tools

Character Counter

Count characters, letters, digits, punctuation, lines, and UTF-8 bytes. Live as you type.

Total

No spaces

No whitespace

Letters

Digits

Punctuation

Spaces

Lines

UTF-8 bytes

Files processed in your browser

Your files never leave your device. No upload, no servers.

About Character Counter

Character Counter gives you a precise breakdown of your text: total characters, characters minus spaces, characters minus all whitespace, letters, digits, punctuation, lines, and UTF-8 byte size. Helpful for hitting hard character limits on social posts, meta descriptions, SMS messages, and database fields. The tool runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded. Useful when working with confidential drafts or pasting from internal sources. Common uses include trimming meta descriptions to 155 characters for SEO, fitting an SMS into 160 bytes, hitting Twitter/X limits, and verifying that user input stays under a database column's length.

How Character Counter works

Type or paste any text into the input.
All counts update live: total characters, no-spaces, no-whitespace, letters, digits, punctuation, lines.
UTF-8 byte count separately accounts for emoji and non-Latin characters that take 2-4 bytes each.
Compare byte count vs. character count to know whether your text fits a 160-byte SMS or 280-character tweet.
Refresh to clear, or paste new text to replace.

When to use Character Counter

Trim meta descriptions to 155–160 characters for clean SERP display in Google.
Fit an SMS into 160 bytes (one segment) or 70 GSM characters with emoji.
Hit Twitter/X's 280-character limit while accounting for emoji weighting.
Verify user-supplied input fits a VARCHAR(255) database column before INSERT.
Check that a translated string fits the same UI space as the original (varies wildly between languages).
Count specific subsets — letters only, digits only, or punctuation only — for analysis.

Why choose Utilix Character Counter

UTF-8 byte counter most online counters skip — critical for SMS, database limits, and binary protocols.
Separates 'no spaces' from 'no whitespace' (tabs, newlines) — most platforms count differently.
Live, no-button-press updates every keystroke.
Local-only — work on confidential strings without uploading.
No signup, no daily limit, no input cap.