Letter counter
This counts alphabetic characters only. Digits, punctuation, spaces and symbols are excluded, and shown separately so you can see what was left out.
Numbers appear here once you add text.
- Free, no sign-up
- Counts as you type
- Your text never leaves your browser
Letters, characters and glyphs
A letter is an alphabetic character: a–z, A–Z, and accented forms such as é, ñ and ü. A character is any unit of text at all, including the space bar. Letters are always the smaller number.
Accented letters count as one letter each. Ligatures such as æ count as one. Digits never count as letters, so a phone number contributes nothing to this total.
When you actually need a letter count
Rarely, but specifically.
- Puzzles and games — crosswords, anagram grids, word games with letter budgets.
- Cryptography exercises — frequency analysis works on letters, not characters.
- Handwriting and calligraphy — estimating how much physical space a piece will fill.
- Linguistic analysis — average letters per word is a rough proxy for vocabulary complexity.
For form limits, submission caps and social platforms, you want the character count instead — those systems count every keystroke, spaces included.
Common questions
Do accented letters count?
Yes, and as one letter each. É, ü, ñ, ç and the rest of the Latin-script accented range are all counted. Characters from non-Latin alphabets are counted as characters rather than letters.
Do numbers count as letters?
No. Digits are counted separately in the panel. Only alphabetic characters contribute to the letter total.
Related tools
- Character counterWith spaces, without spaces, letters and digits.
- Word counterWords, characters, sentences and reading time, live.
- Syllable counterSyllables per line and total, for poetry and readability.
- Word frequency counterRanked word counts with a stop-word filter.
- Case converterFour case conversions with live counts.