How Can I Determine the Byte Size of C# Objects?

Exploring the byte size of C# objects

In C#, it is not easy to accurately determine the byte size of any object instance. Objects may contain various collections, combinations, and individual entities, making it difficult to accurately measure their size.

Determine object size

While there is no public API, there is an efficient way to determine the byte size of an object:

<code class="language-csharp">object obj = new List<int>();
RuntimeTypeHandle th = obj.GetType().TypeHandle;
int size = *(*(int**)&th + 1);
Console.WriteLine(size);</code>

This code uses the object's type TypeHandle to get the internal "Base Instance Size" field. Note that this method is not documented and may be deprecated in a future .NET update.

Factors to consider

This method works on "normal" objects that have instances of the same, well-defined type. However, it cannot accurately measure the size of objects such as arrays, strings, and StringBuilders because their size depends on the number of elements they contain. For these objects, the size of their containing elements must be added to their base instance size.

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