Unicode Character Lookup — Free Unicode Search Tool

Unicode contains over 149,000 characters spanning 161 scripts, thousands of symbols, emoji, mathematical notation, currency signs, and control characters. Our free Unicode Character Lookup lets you search for any character by name or direct codepoint, browse categories, and copy characters with full metadata — codepoint, HTML entity, UTF-8 byte sequence, and JSON escape.

What Is Unicode?

Unicode is the universal character encoding standard that assigns a unique number (codepoint) to every character used in writing, symbols, and emoji worldwide. Created to solve the fragmented mess of incompatible regional character sets (ASCII, Latin-1, Shift-JIS, etc.), Unicode enables computers to correctly represent text in all the world’s languages on the same system.

The Unicode Standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium and is now at version 15.1, covering:

• Basic Latin (ASCII), Latin Extended A–B, Latin supplement
• Scripts — Arabic, Hebrew, Devanagari (Hindi), Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Greek, Cyrillic, and 140+ more
• Symbols — Mathematical operators, currency, arrows, geometric shapes, technical symbols
• Emoji — 3,600+ emoji characters as of Unicode 15
• Historic scripts — Egyptian hieroglyphics, Linear B, cuneiform, Gothic

How to Use the Unicode Lookup

Search by Name: Type a character description like heart, arrow, star, check, pi, euro, or infinity in the search field and click Search or press Enter.

Search by Codepoint: Enter a Unicode codepoint like U+2764 or U+1F600 to look up the exact character.

Browse Categories: Click category buttons (Arrows, Symbols, Math, Punctuation, Currency, Emoji) to browse curated character sets.

Copy Characters: Click any character card to instantly copy it to your clipboard.

Character Information Provided

For each character, the tool provides:

This information is what you need to correctly reference, embed, or transmit a Unicode character in any context.

Unicode Codepoint System

Every Unicode character has a codepoint: a unique integer. Codepoints are written as U+ followed by the hex value:

• U+0041 = A (Latin Capital Letter A)
• U+0041 to U+007A = Standard ASCII letters
• U+00E9 = é (Latin Small Letter E with Acute)
• U+03C0 = π (Greek Pi)
• U+20AC = € (Euro Sign)
• U+2764 = ❤ (Heavy Black Heart)
• U+1F600 = 😀 (Grinning Face emoji)

Codepoints above U+FFFF are in the Supplementary Planes and require surrogate pairs in UTF-16 or 4-byte sequences in UTF-8.

UTF-8 Encoding

Unicode codepoints are stored on disk and transmitted over networks using an encoding. The most common is UTF-8, which encodes each codepoint as 1–4 bytes:

UTF-8 is backwards-compatible with ASCII (same byte values for the first 128 codepoints), which is why ASCII text is valid UTF-8.

HTML Entities for Special Characters

Unicode characters can be embedded in HTML using character entities. Two formats:

Named entities (for common characters):

&   →  &
&lt;    →  <
&gt;    →  >
&copy;  →  ©
&euro;  →  €
&infin; →  ∞
&hearts; → ♥

Numeric entities (for any Unicode character):

❤  →  ❤ (decimal codepoint)
❤  →  ❤ (hex codepoint)
😀 →  😀 (grinning face, decimal)

HTML entities are useful when you can’t type the character directly, need to avoid encoding issues, or want self-documenting HTML source.

Common Unicode Categories

Arrows

← → ↑ ↓ ⇐ ⇒ ➔ ↔ ↕ ↖ ↗ ↘ ↙ — Used in mathematical notation, UI directional indicators, documentation.

Mathematical Operators

≤ ≥ ≠ ≈ ∞ ± × ÷ √ ∑ ∏ ∫ ∂ ∆ — Essential for scientific and mathematical documents.

Currency Signs

$ € £ ¥ ₹ ₿ ₽ ₩ ₣ ₤ — For internationalized e-commerce, finance, documentation.

Typography

… • – — « » ‹ › ' ' " " ™ ® © § ¶ — Critical for proper typography in articles and documentation.

Greek Letters

α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο π ρ σ τ υ φ χ ψ ω — Used in physics, mathematics, statistics, engineering.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I type a Unicode character I find here?

On Windows: Win+. opens the emoji/character picker. For arbitrary codepoints, use Alt+ the decimal code on the numpad (for Unicode, you need a registry edit). On Mac: Ctrl+Cmd+Space opens the character viewer. In most apps, simply copying the character from this tool is the most reliable method.

What is the difference between Unicode and UTF-8?

Unicode is the standard that assigns numbers to characters. UTF-8 is an encoding — a way to store those numbers as bytes. Unicode is like a phone book (number → character), UTF-8 is like the postal system that delivers the message. UTF-16 and UTF-32 are alternative encodings of the same Unicode codepoints.

Can I use Unicode emoji in HTML?

Yes. Emoji are Unicode characters (codepoints above U+1F000), and any UTF-8 encoded HTML file can include them directly: <p>Hello 😀</p>. No special encoding required in modern browsers.

What does U+ mean before a codepoint?

U+ is the conventional notation prefix for Unicode codepoints. U+1F600 means “Unicode codepoint 1F600 (hexadecimal)”. It doesn’t appear in the actual encoded bytes — it’s just the standardized way to write codepoint references.

Why do some characters look like boxes or question marks?

If a character appears as a box (□) or question mark (🔲), your system doesn’t have a font installed that includes that character’s glyph. System font coverage varies by OS and installed fonts. Most Emoji and technical symbols are included in standard modern OS fonts.