UTF-8 Byte Inspector — Free Online Tool
Inspect the UTF-8 byte encoding of any text character by character. Shows the Unicode code point (U+XXXX), decimal value, and hex bytes for every character including emoji, accented letters, and CJK. Useful for understanding why strings use more bytes than characters, and for debugging encoding issues.
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How to use UTF-8 Byte Inspector
- Type or paste text into the input area.
- A table shows each character's code point, decimal, and UTF-8 bytes.
- Check the stats row for total characters vs. total bytes.
- Use presets to explore emoji and accented character encodings.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does an emoji use 4 bytes?
Emoji have code points above U+FFFF, which require 4 bytes in UTF-8 encoding (compared to 1 byte for standard ASCII).
Why is 'é' 2 bytes but 'e' is 1 byte?
ASCII characters (U+0000–U+007F) encode as 1 byte. 'é' is U+00E9, which falls in the 2-byte range (U+0080–U+07FF).
What is the difference between character count and byte count?
Character count counts Unicode code points. Byte count counts the actual storage bytes. For ASCII text they're equal; for emoji and accented letters, bytes > characters.
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