Character & Word Counter

How it works

• Characters are counted as you see them: a combined emoji such as 👨‍👩‍👧 counts as one.
• UTF-8 bytes: English letters 1 byte, Hangul/Chinese/Japanese 3 bytes, a simple emoji 4 bytes (combined emoji more) — useful for SMS and form limits.
• Korean job applications often limit answers by characters with or without spaces — check which one.

FAQ

How many bytes is a Korean character?

In UTF-8 a Hangul syllable is 3 bytes; in older EUC-KR systems it is 2 bytes.

Worked example

Example: "Hello world" has 11 characters with spaces, 10 without, 2 words and 11 bytes in UTF-8. The Korean phrase "안녕하세요" has 5 characters but 15 bytes, because each Hangul syllable takes 3 bytes in UTF-8.

Korean job applications often limit essays by characters, e.g. "1,000자 (공백 포함)" — 1,000 characters including spaces.

Byte counts by script: in UTF-8, English letters and digits take 1 byte, most accented Latin letters 2 bytes, and common Korean, Chinese and Japanese characters 3 bytes each (rare characters can take 4). A 100-character Korean sentence is therefore about 300 bytes, which matters when a form or database field limits bytes rather than characters. Line breaks count as characters with spaces but are removed from the count without spaces.

Common mistakes

• Check whether a limit counts spaces and line breaks; sites differ.
• Korean text messages count 2 bytes per Hangul character: a short SMS is 90 bytes (45 Korean characters).
• Emoji can be counted as more than one character by some systems.
• Word processors and online counters treat line breaks and emoji differently, so the same text can show a slightly different count. Paste the final version into the application form itself to confirm before submitting.

Explanation checked on 2026-10-30 · Spotted an outdated value? Tell us