Breakdown
Counted as you type
Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no button to press. Paste or type and every figure updates immediately, which makes it usable for trimming something down to a limit.
Characters and bytes are different numbers
A byte count uses UTF-8, where a Latin letter takes one byte but an accented letter takes two and a CJK character three. If a field limit is stated in bytes rather than characters, that is the number to watch.
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Frequently asked questions
Q. How are words counted?
By runs of non-whitespace, so hyphenated compounds count as one. For scripts written without spaces the character count is the more useful figure.
Q. How are sentences detected?
By full stops, question marks and exclamation marks. Abbreviations with periods will inflate the count slightly — treat it as an estimate.
Q. Why is the byte count higher than the character count?
Because UTF-8 uses more than one byte for anything outside basic Latin. Two bytes for most accented and Cyrillic letters, three for CJK, four for most emoji.