MultiKit

Word Counter: Count Words, Characters and Lines Instantly

  • Free
  • No sign-up
  • Runs in your browser
  • Version 1.0.1
  • Last updated 2026-10-25
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Paste or type text to see the word count right away, along with the character count, the count without spaces, lines and UTF-8 bytes. Useful for an essay, a post with a word limit, or a caption.

Words
0
Characters
0
Without spaces
0
Lines
0
UTF-8 bytes
0

Everything you enter is processed in your browser and is never sent to a server.

How to use

  1. Type or paste your text into the box.
  2. Read the word count, shown first and larger. The other counts (characters, characters without spaces, lines, UTF-8 bytes) are listed beside it.
  3. The counts update as you type, so you can watch them while editing down to a limit.

Examples

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
→ 9 words, 44 characters, 35 without spaces
Nine runs of non-space characters, separated by the spaces between them.
Hello, World! 안녕하세요
→ 3 words
Punctuation stays attached to the word next to it, so "Hello," counts as one word, the way most word processors count it.
A caption at a 300-character limit
→ Characters updates live so you can see when you are close
Use Characters, not Words, when a site limits length by character.

How it works

This page is the character counter with the word count shown first. A word is a run of non-space characters, found by trimming the text and splitting it on runs of whitespace, so punctuation stays attached to the word it is next to rather than being stripped out. Characters are counted by Unicode code point, not by UTF-16 code unit, so an emoji or a character outside the common range still counts as one. The UTF-8 byte count is worked out with the browser’s own TextEncoder, the real encoding nearly every website, file and database uses.

The counting logic is covered by tests, including text with punctuation, line breaks and Korean.

Sources

Frequently asked questions

How is a word counted?
As a run of characters with no space in it, with runs separated by spaces, tabs or line breaks. Punctuation attached to a word is not stripped off, so "word," and "word" both count as one word each, and a hyphenated word such as well-known is one word too, since there is no space inside it. This matches how most word processors count.
Does it work for Korean, Chinese or Japanese text?
It counts by the same rule: runs of characters between spaces. Korean is usually written with spaces between words, so the count is close to the real word count. Chinese and Japanese are usually written with no spaces at all, so a whole sentence can count as a single "word" by this method; for those, the character count is the more meaningful number.
What is the difference between characters and characters without spaces?
Characters counts every character including spaces and line breaks. Characters without spaces leaves out spaces, tabs and line breaks, which is closer to what some strict character limits (such as some print forms) actually count.
Why is the byte count different from the character count?
Letters outside the plain English alphabet, such as é or 안, take more than one byte in UTF-8, the encoding almost all text is stored in today, so a short text in Korean or with accents can have more bytes than characters. This matters for limits measured in bytes, such as some database fields or SMS messages.
Is my text uploaded?
No. The counting happens in your browser as you type, and nothing is sent anywhere.
Version history
  • 1.0.1 — Makes the search title and description state the supported task, key formats and privacy benefit more clearly.
  • 1.0.0 — First release.

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