About this tool
Checking how close you are to a post's character limit, or getting a rough sense of a draft's length, comes up constantly when writing. This tool counts characters, lines and bytes the moment you paste text, and keeps the numbers updated as you type.
Beyond a simple character count, it breaks the total down by full-width and half-width characters and shows the size in UTF-8 bytes — useful when a form's limit is defined in bytes rather than characters.
For Japanese writing it also estimates the number of 400-character manuscript pages (genkoyoshi), a common way to gauge the length of a draft or short story.
How to use it
- Paste the text you want to measure into the text area.
- Character, line and byte counts appear on the right and update as you type.
- Check the breakdowns for whitespace-excluded counts and full-width/half-width characters.
- Use the copy button next to any figure to copy just that number.
Features
Multiple ways to count
See counts with and without line breaks, and with and without whitespace, side by side.
Byte size
Shows the UTF-8 byte size, useful for forms whose limit is defined in bytes rather than characters.
Full-width / half-width breakdown
Counts full-width and half-width characters separately — handy for text that mixes both.
Manuscript page estimate
Estimates the number of 400-character manuscript pages, a common Japanese length reference.
Frequently asked questions
Do line breaks and spaces count as characters?
The total count includes line breaks and spaces. A separate figure shows the count with whitespace excluded.
Are emoji-style characters counted correctly?
Counting is done by Unicode code point, so characters like emoji that span two UTF-16 code units are still counted as one character.
Which encoding is the byte count based on?
The byte count assumes UTF-8, which is what most web forms use, so it works as a direct estimate.
Is the manuscript page estimate exact?
It's the total character count divided by 400. Actual manuscript paper leaves blank space at line breaks, so treat it as an approximation.