Free generator, copy and paste
Homoglyph detector catch the letters pretending to be Latin
Some letters from Cyrillic, Greek and Armenian are drawn exactly like a, e, o or p. Paste a link, username or message and every lookalike is found, labelled and swapped back to the real letter.
- lookalikes made plain
- lookalikes shown
- what was found
- what was found
Updated · strikethroughtext.online
What the three results mean
- Lookalikes made plain is your text with every suspicious letter swapped for the Latin one it imitates. Styled Unicode letters, such as bold or fullwidth ones, come back as normal letters too. Copy this version into a search box, a spreadsheet or code.
- Lookalikes shown leaves the text as it is but tags each lookalike in place, like p⟦а→a U+0430⟧ypal.com, so you can see exactly where the swap happened.
- What was found lists each lookalike with its script, code point and the letter it imitates, plus a count of styled letters and hidden characters.
The letters it checks
| Looks like | Cyrillic | Greek | Other |
|---|---|---|---|
| a | а U+0430 | α U+03B1 | |
| e | е U+0435 | ||
| o | о U+043E | ο U+03BF | օ U+0585 Armenian |
| p | р U+0440 | ρ U+03C1 | |
| c, x, y | с, х, у | ||
| i, l | і U+0456, ӏ U+04CF | ι U+03B9 | ı dotless, ℓ script l |
| A, B, E, H, K, M, O, P, T, X | А В Е Н К М О Р Т Х | Α Β Ε Η Κ Μ Ο Ρ Τ Χ |
These are the pairs that look identical in common fonts. Letters that are only similar, like Cyrillic и and Latin n, are left out so that genuine text is not flagged.
Where lookalikes turn up
- Phishing links. A domain such as pаypal.com with a Cyrillic а is a different address from the real one, and it can carry a valid certificate.
- Usernames. Impostor accounts on Discord, X and Instagram copy a known handle with one swapped letter.
- Filter evasion. Spam and abuse slip past word filters because the filtered word no longer matches character for character.
- Copied text. Text that has been through some paraphrasing or watermarking tools can carry swapped letters that break search and spell check.
Clean text for code and data
Lookalikes cause bugs that are hard to find: a variable that will not match, a CSV value that fails a lookup, a password that is “wrong”. Paste the text here, copy the plain row, and then run it through the invisible character remover to catch zero-width spaces and no-break spaces as well.
Questions people ask
What is a homoglyph?
A homoglyph is a character that looks the same as another one but has a different code. The Cyrillic letter а (U+0430) and the Latin letter a (U+0061) are drawn identically in most fonts, yet a computer sees two different characters. That gap is what phishing links, fake usernames and filter dodgers rely on.
How can I tell if a link is a homograph attack?
Paste it here. If the report lists a Cyrillic or Greek character inside a word that is otherwise Latin, the link is not the site it pretends to be. Browsers also show such domains in their punycode form, starting with xn--, when you look closely at the address bar.
Will it break real Russian or Greek text?
No. A lookalike is only flagged when it sits inside a word that also has Latin letters, or when a whole word is made of nothing but lookalikes. Ordinary Russian, Ukrainian, Greek and Armenian sentences pass through unchanged.
Why would someone hide lookalike letters in text?
Mostly to fool something. Scammers register domains with swapped letters, spammers dodge word filters, impostors copy a username with one letter changed, and some AI watermarking and plagiarism tricks swap letters so copied text does not match the original.
Does it catch zero-width and other invisible characters too?
It shows how many hidden characters the text contains in the last row. To remove them, or see exactly where they sit, use the invisible character remover.