Best 3 ASCII Code Lookup Tools Compared

A string has something invisible in it. A comparison that should pass is failing, or a CSV column has a character your parser will not accept, and you need to know exactly which character it is — not roughly, exactly.

That means a code point. U+00A0 is a non-breaking space and U+0020 is a normal one; they look identical and behave completely differently. A lookup tool turns “there’s something weird here” into a number you can search for, and the tools differ mostly in which number formats they hand you.

How to judge a character lookup tool

Which formats does it show? Decimal and hex cover most debugging. Octal shows up in older systems, and HTML entities or CSS escapes matter if the fix is going into markup rather than code.

Does it go both ways? Half the job is character to code; the other half is pasting U+2014 and finding out it is an em dash.

Does it handle everything past ASCII? True ASCII stops at 127. Most real problems — smart quotes, non-breaking spaces, emoji — live well beyond that, so the tool needs to be a Unicode tool that also speaks ASCII.

Where does it run? Strings you are debugging are often production data. Browser-side processing means the paste never leaves the machine.

The comparison

Facts checked August 2026; tools change their plans. Table covers only the 3 alternatives — our tool gets its own section below.

ToolKun Unicode Lookup

The one to use when the fix is going into HTML or CSS. Enter a character and it returns the code point in U+XXXX form, HTML hexadecimal and decimal entities, the CSS and JavaScript escape format, and the UTF-8 encoding — so you can copy the exact escape rather than working it out. It also searches the other way, from code point to character, and states that all lookups happen in your browser with no data sent to servers.

It supports the full range, emoji and every writing system included. The shape of the tool is single-character lookup, though, so a long string with one bad byte in it is not what it is built for.

Tarkarn ASCII / Unicode Converter

The most complete numeric view. It converts in both directions and shows four representations of every character — decimal, hexadecimal, octal and Unicode U+XXXX — with a table view for full per-character detail and a compact view when you just want the essentials. No account, and processing happens in your browser.

Octal is the differentiator; almost nothing else here shows it, and it still appears in file permissions and older C-style escapes. If you never need it, four columns per character is more information than the job requires.

Coddy ASCII Converter

The most focused of the three. Text to ASCII codes and back, in decimal, hexadecimal or binary — the page uses A becoming 65, 41 or 01000001 as its example. Everything runs locally in the browser, and switching to ASCII → Text mode decodes a list of codes back into readable text.

Binary is the useful oddity here: helpful when you are reasoning about bits rather than characters. What it does not show is octal or U+ notation, so for anything above the classic ASCII range you will want one of the others.

Char to ASCII

Ours converts any character to its ASCII decimal, hex and Unicode code point, converts code points back to characters, and includes notes on the encoding itself — which is usually the part that resolves the confusion, because “why is this character breaking things” is nearly always an encoding question rather than a lookup question.

What it does not do: output HTML entities and CSS escapes the way ToolKun does, or show octal. If your fix is a markup escape, ToolKun is the faster route. The official Unicode code charts remain the authority when you need to confirm what a code point actually is.

Which one to pick

• The fix goes into HTML or CSS — ToolKun, for the ready-made escapes.
• You need octal, or all four formats at once — Tarkarn.
• You are thinking in bits — Coddy’s binary view.
• You want the code point plus an explanation of the encoding — the tool below.

How to do it with Char to ASCII

1. Open Char to ASCII and paste the character you are chasing.
2. Read the decimal, hex and Unicode code point — the code point is the value to search for.
3. To go the other way, paste a code point and get the character back.
4. Check the encoding notes if the character is above 127; that is where most mismatches originate.

The walkthrough version is in how to find a character’s ASCII or Unicode code. Other converters are in the tools directory.

You might also need

For the classic table rather than a single lookup, the ASCII Table Reference lays out all 128 codes at once, which is faster when you are scanning for a control character.

When the problem is a whole file rather than one character, the Unicode Character Inspector walks through a string and flags what is actually in it.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free character lookup tool that doesn’t need an account?

All four here are free and none require an account. ToolKun, Tarkarn, Coddy and our tool all state that lookups happen in your browser, so the string you are debugging stays on your machine.

What is the difference between an ASCII code and a Unicode code point?

ASCII covers 0 to 127 and Unicode extends far past it, but for those first 128 characters the values are identical. That is why A is 65 in both — ASCII is effectively the opening section of Unicode.

Why do two identical-looking characters behave differently?

Because they are different code points. A non-breaking space (U+00A0) and a regular space (U+0020) render the same and compare as unequal, which is behind a large share of “this string should match” bugs.

Final thought

Get the code point first, then decide what to do about it. Almost every invisible-character bug is five minutes of confusion followed by ten seconds of certainty, and the lookup is what separates the two.

Try the free Char to ASCII