Chinese character stroke count lookup. Enter any character → exact count + per-stroke visualisation.
Hanzi Stroke Count Lookup (汉字笔画查询)
How to use
Enter a character
Single-char lookup (multi-char input uses first only).
View stroke count
Large display for quick reading.
View stroke breakdown
Each stroke shown separately — red = current, grey = previous. Great for calligraphy teaching.
Rare character handling
If a character is not in the database, the tool clearly says so. ~9000+ common chars supported.
Chinese Stroke Count: The Atomic Unit of Hanzi Writing
A Chinese stroke (笔画) is the smallest indivisible unit of Hanzi writing — each pen-down to pen-up = one stroke. Stroke count is a core character attribute affecting literacy, dictionary indexing, name studies, and calligraphy. The tool uses the open-source hanzi-writer-data set (9,574 characters) for modern stroke counts and the shape of each stroke.
Stroke types
Traditional 5 categories: horizontal (橫), vertical (豎), left-falling (撇), right-falling (捺), dot (點). Compound strokes such as horizontal-turn and left-falling-turn subdivide them further. Tool shows each stroke's exact shape.
Uses
(1) Literacy teaching: children learn Hanzi via stroke order. (2) Name studies: 三才五格 + bazi systems use stroke counts. (3) Calligraphy: practice follows stroke order. (4) Dictionary lookup: Kangxi Dictionary indexes by stroke count.
一 is one stroke; 鱻, the most in this tool, is thirty-three
Eight characters in this tool's data are a single stroke, among them 一, 乙, 丨 and 丶. 乂, often listed with them, has two.
The most strokes in this tool's data is 鱻 (xiān), at 33. Unicode encodes far more complex characters — Unihan gives 龘 48 strokes and 𱁬 84 — but neither is in the stroke-order data.
Counts follow the modern convention: 艹 is three strokes, 辶 three, 阝 two. Against Unicode's Unihan counts, 9,104 of the tool's 9,574 characters agree; most of the rest carry those components, such as 范 (8 here, 9 in Unihan) and 迅 (6 and 7).
Simplified and traditional forms can differ a lot: 龙 has 5 strokes and 龍 16; 门 has 3 and 門 8.
The Kangxi Dictionary orders characters by its 214 radicals, then by the strokes outside the radical.
Name-study systems such as 三才五格 count strokes the Kangxi way (氵 as 4, 艹 as 6), so their totals differ from this tool's modern counts.
The data comes from the open-source hanzi-writer-data set, under Arphic Technology's Arphic Public License.
Frequently Asked Questions
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The data covers 9,574 characters, so rare ones such as 龘 may be missing. Use a specialised dictionary for those.
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Yes. E.g. 龙 (Simp, 5) vs 龍 (Trad, 16); 门 (Simp, 3) vs 門 (Trad, 8). Tool counts the specific form you input.
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No.
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Right-click each SVG → save. Each stroke is a standalone SVG.
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Mostly. Against Unicode's Unihan counts, 9,104 of 9,574 characters (about 95%) agree; most differences come from how components such as 艹, 辶 and 阝 are counted — 范 is 8 here and 9 in Unihan.
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Tool covers stroke count only. For radicals see Kangxi Radical Lookup.
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Partly. The data follows Chinese character forms, so kanji shared with Chinese work; Japanese-only forms may be missing or counted differently.
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Single-char lookup. For multi-char analysis see Name Stroke Analyzer.
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They differ: the total is how many strokes, the order is which comes first. The tool shows both, stroke by stroke in the data's order.
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hanzi-writer-data, based on Taiwan Arphic ARPHIC fonts, Arphic Public License open-source.
Method & sources
How it computes
Stroke count = the number of strokes in the character's hanzi-writer-data file (9,574 characters, modern counting: 艹 3, 辶 3, 阝 2); the stroke-by-stroke preview draws those strokes in the file's order. Unknown characters say so rather than guess.
What this tool implements
- Compared all 9,574 characters with Unicode Unihan kTotalStrokes: 9,104 agree; nearly all differences are the 艹/辶/阝 counting convention (范 8 here, 9 in Unihan). The page said '99% match' with an example (门 as 3 or 4) that is not in dispute; corrected to the measured figure.
- Corrected: 乂 is two strokes, not one; 龘 (48) and 靐 (39) are not 'the most strokes' (Unihan encodes up to 84, 𱁬) and are not in the tool's data, whose maximum is 鱻 (33). Removed as unsourced: a Modern Chinese Dictionary figure and average, '8 stroke-order rules', '30+ stroke types' and expert-eye claims; the Japanese-kanji answer narrowed to Chinese character forms.
Sources
- hanzi-writer-data (character stroke data for Hanzi Writer), Arphic Public License. https://github.com/chanind/hanzi-writer-data
- Unicode Consortium. Unihan database (UAX #38), Unicode 18.0: kTotalStrokes. https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/ucd/Unihan.zip
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