Byte / Bit Counter

About Byte Counter

Different character encodings use different numbers of bytes to represent text. This matters for database column sizing (VARCHAR limits), API payload limits, URL length limits, and network bandwidth estimation.

Encodings Explained

• UTF-8: 1-4 bytes per character. ASCII characters = 1 byte, most European = 2, CJK = 3, emoji = 4. The web standard.
• UTF-16: 2 or 4 bytes per character. Used by JavaScript internally, Windows APIs, Java/C#.
• ASCII: 1 byte per character, 0-127 only. Characters outside ASCII are counted as 1 byte (replacement char).
• Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1): 1 byte per character, 0-255. Covers Western European languages.

FAQ

Why is my string longer in bytes than in characters?

Non-ASCII characters (accented letters, CJK, emoji) require multiple bytes in UTF-8. The string "Hello" is 5 bytes, but "Héllo" is 6 bytes (é = 2 bytes). An emoji like "🚀" is 4 bytes.

Which encoding should I use for database columns?

Use UTF-8 (specifically utf8mb4 in MySQL) for any text that might contain non-English characters or emoji. VARCHAR(255) in utf8mb4 can store 255 characters but up to 1020 bytes. Check your database's limits.