Both CHAR and NCHAR are fixed length string data types. They have the following differences −
| CHAR Data Type | NCHAR Data Type |
| Its full name is CHARACTER. | Its full name is NATIONAL CHARACTER |
| It uses ASCII character set | It uses Unicode character set and data is stored in UTF8 format |
| It occupies 1-byte of space for each character. | It Occupies 2-bytes of space for each character |
mysql>create table hello1(name CHAR(20)); Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.15 | mysql>create table hello(name NCHAR(20)); Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.61 |