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Text Data Size Calculator

Estimate storage size for text strings in ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32. Essential for database schema planning and bandwidth estimation.

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About

Database engineers and system architects must calculate text storage requirements precisely to optimize schemas (CHAR vs VARCHAR) and estimate bandwidth costs. While a character count is visible, the byte count varies drastically based on the encoding. A standard Latin character might be 1 byte in UTF-8, but an Emoji or CJK character can consume 3 to 4 bytes. This tool calculates the exact binary footprint of your text across major standards, including ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32, helping prevent data truncation errors like MySQL Error 1406.

byte calculator utf-8 size database storage string length programming

Formulas

Storage size S is calculated by summing the byte width w of each code point c in string T.

S = n∑i=1 width(ci)

For UTF-8, the width logic is piecewise:

width(c) =
{
1 if code < 1282 if code < 20483 if code < 655364 otherwise

Reference Data

EncodingBytes per CharUse CaseEmoji Support
ASCII1Legacy Systems, Log FilesFALSE
UTF-81-4Web Standards (HTML5), JSONTRUE
UTF-162 or 4Java, Windows APITRUE
UTF-324Internal Processing (O(1) access)TRUE
Latin-11Western European LegacyFALSE

Frequently Asked Questions

Computers store text as numbers (bytes). In UTF-8, common English letters use 1 byte, but complex symbols (like Emojis or Kanji) require multiple bytes to define a single visible character.
UTF-8 (specifically utf8mb4 in MySQL) is the modern standard. It is storage-efficient for Latin scripts while supporting every global character and emoji.
An SMS is limited to 140 bytes. This equals 160 characters in 7-bit GSM encoding, but only 70 characters if using 16-bit Unicode (e.g., if you include an emoji).
It depends. If it's pure English ASCII, it is exactly 1 MB (approx). If it's UTF-8 with many symbols, it could be 1.5 MB to 4 MB.