Text Encoding Byte Counter

Text encoding byte counter

This free text encoding byte counter measures how much space text uses in UTF-8, UTF-16, or UTF-32. Choose little-endian or big-endian byte order for UTF-16 and UTF-32, and optionally include a byte order mark (BOM). Compare the encoded byte size of whitespace, accented letters, non-Latin scripts, and emoji instantly in your browser.

⭐ Bytes vs. characters

A character is not always one byte. In UTF-8, characters use between one and four bytes. UTF-16 uses two bytes for most characters and four for characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane. UTF-32 uses four bytes per Unicode code point. The same text can therefore have a different byte size in each encoding.

🔎 What this byte counter measures

• UTF-8 — variable-width encoding that uses one to four bytes per Unicode code point.
• UTF-16 little-endian and big-endian — two-byte code units, with supplementary characters represented by a four-byte surrogate pair.
• UTF-32 little-endian and big-endian — four bytes per Unicode code point.
• Optional BOM — include the encoding's byte order mark in the reported size.
• Characters — Unicode code points, which may differ from the number of visual symbols.
• Bytes per character — the average encoded byte size for the text.
• Bytes without whitespace — the selected encoding's byte length after whitespace characters are removed.
• ASCII and non-ASCII characters — a quick view of how many code points are in each group.

⚙️ When should I count encoded text bytes?

Use a byte counter when a system limits data by bytes rather than characters. This can help check API request sizes, database fields, message payloads, file contents, and form submissions. Select the same encoding, byte order, and BOM behavior as the target system, and verify whether additional formatting or protocol data is included.

💡 Example: ASCII and emoji

The text Hello has 5 characters and 5 bytes in UTF-8, 10 bytes in UTF-16, and 20 bytes in UTF-32. The text Hi 😊 has 4 Unicode code points: it takes 7 bytes in UTF-8, 10 in UTF-16, or 16 in UTF-32. The counter lets you compare these sizes.

📏 KB and KiB

The tool displays decimal kilobytes (KB), where 1 KB is 1,000 bytes, and kibibytes (KiB), where 1 KiB is 1,024 bytes. Check which unit a service uses before comparing its size limit.

⚠️ Byte count and line endings

Browsers normally normalize line breaks in a text area. This tool counts the text value as the browser provides it, so the reported size may differ from a file that preserves Windows CRLF or another line-ending format. The BOM option adds the selected encoding's BOM to the reported totals.

🔐 Private, in-browser counting

Your text is counted locally in your browser and is not uploaded or stored by this tool. Use Clear to remove the text from the input when you are done.

This tool is also known as

• UTF-8 UTF-16 UTF-32 byte counter
• count text bytes in different encodings
• UTF-16 byte counter online
• UTF-32 byte counter online
• compare UTF encoding sizes