Word Counter
Count words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and reading time - live as you type.
How to use
- Paste or type your text into the box.
- Counts update instantly as you type - no button to press.
- Check words, characters (with and without spaces), sentences, paragraphs and estimated reading time.
Frequently asked questions
Is my text uploaded anywhere?
No. Counting happens entirely in your browser - your text never leaves your device.
How is reading time calculated?
We use the common average of 200 words per minute for silent reading.
Is there a limit on text length?
No hard limit - it comfortably handles book-length text since everything runs locally.
Live counts for everything that has a limit
College essays capped at 650 words, abstracts at 250, LinkedIn summaries at 2,600 characters, meta descriptions at 160 - writing lives inside limits. Paste or type here and every metric updates live: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and estimated reading time. No buttons, no page reloads, and your text never leaves the browser - paste a confidential draft without a second thought.
How the counts are calculated
Words are counted by Unicode word boundaries, which handles hyphenated words, apostrophes, numbers and non-Latin scripts far more accurately than naive space-splitting - the count matches what Microsoft Word and Google Docs report for the same text in virtually all cases. Reading time uses the widely-cited 200 words-per-minute average for silent adult reading; speaking time, useful for speeches and video scripts, runs closer to 130-150 wpm, so add a third to the reading estimate when drafting a talk.
Word count targets worth knowing
Some useful anchors: tweets cap at 280 characters, Instagram captions at 2,200; the Common App essay at 650 words; typical blog posts run 1,000-2,000 words with long-form SEO content at 2,000+; a double-spaced manuscript page holds ~250 words, making a 80,000-word novel about 320 pages. For character-limited fields specifically - bios, meta tags, ad copy - our Character Counter gives the same live treatment with per-limit progress.