Word Counter

Count words, characters, sentences and reading time

Words

Characters

Characters (no spaces)

Sentences

Paragraphs

Lines

Reading time

0 sec

Speaking time

0 sec

How it works

Word Counter — Count words, characters, sentences and reading time. All processing happens in your browser — no upload, no signup, no email required. Free forever.

Last updated: 2026-05-06

Editor's note

We built this specifically for the three counts that ruin a draft if you get them wrong on the day: the 280-character tweet, the 160-character meta description, and the 1500-word essay where the editor will reject you at 1501. Generic counters give you a single number at the bottom of the page and call it done. The moment matters at the keystroke — you want to see the limit colour-shift the second you cross it, not after you publish and the platform truncates your last clause mid-word.

The reading-time and speaking-time split is the other thing we obsess over, because they are not the same measurement. A 1200-word blog post reads silently in about five minutes; the same script read aloud at a conference is closer to nine. People prepping a five-minute talk routinely overrun because they wrote to the wrong rate. We show both numbers side by side so you can size a script for the room it is actually going to be heard in.

About Word Counter

The Word Counter is a real-time text analyzer that tells you exactly how long a piece of writing is. As you paste or type, it counts words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and lines, then estimates how long the passage will take to read silently or read aloud.

Writers, students, copywriters, social media managers and SEO specialists use it to fit content into hard limits — Twitter posts, meta descriptions, college essays, magazine columns, ad headlines. It also helps speakers gauge how long a script will run on stage and helps editors plan column inches.

Everything happens in your browser. The text never leaves your device, no account is needed and refreshing the page wipes the editor — so you can safely paste confidential drafts, NDAs or unpublished manuscripts without worrying about leakage.

How to use Word Counter

Open the tool and click inside the large text area.
Paste your draft, or start typing — counters update on every keystroke with no extra clicks.
Read the live stats: words, characters, characters without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and lines.
Check the reading time and speaking time estimates to plan how long an audience will spend with the piece.
Trim or extend the text until you hit your target, then copy it back into your editor or CMS.
Press Clear to reset the editor when you start a new draft.

Common use cases

Writing a 280-character tweet, a 160-character meta description or a 500-word blog intro and needing live feedback.
Students hitting a 1,500-word essay minimum or a 250-word personal statement maximum without padding or trimming blindly.
Speakers sizing a 5-minute conference talk by checking the speaking time of the script.
SEO writers verifying that title tags, headings and product descriptions stay inside the lengths search engines actually display.
Translators billing by source word count and needing a quick, trustworthy total.

Tips & common mistakes

Reading time uses 238 words per minute (silent) and speaking time uses 130 wpm — a comfortable presentation pace. Adjust your script if your delivery is faster or slower.
Characters without spaces is the count many publishers and translators care about — use it for invoicing and rate cards rather than the raw character total.
For Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Thai, character count is far more meaningful than word count, since these languages do not use spaces between words.
Hard line breaks count as separate lines. If your line count looks inflated, your source probably has soft-wrapped lines from a PDF or email — clean those up first.

Frequently asked questions

How is reading time calculated?

We assume 238 words per minute (the average adult silent-reading speed) and 130 wpm for speaking. Both update live as you type.

Does it work for non-English languages?

Yes — we count whitespace-separated tokens. Languages without spaces (Chinese, Japanese, Thai) report character count more meaningfully than word count.

Is the text saved anywhere?

No. The text stays in your browser's memory and is never sent to a server. Refreshing the page clears it.

What exactly counts as a sentence?

We split on '.', '!' and '?' followed by whitespace or end of text. Abbreviations like 'Dr.' or 'e.g.' may be miscounted as sentence endings — for academic prose with many abbreviations, treat the sentence count as a close approximation.

Can I count words in a Word document or PDF?

Open the file, select all the text and paste it into the editor. The counter analyses whatever is in the box — it does not parse files directly, which is what keeps the tool fully offline.

Why does my count differ from Microsoft Word's?

Word treats hyphenated phrases like 'state-of-the-art' as one word, while many counters split on hyphens. We use whitespace-only splitting, which matches the convention most editors and journalists follow. Differences of 1-2% on long documents are normal.