Word Counter

Count words, characters and reading time — and see which words you lean on.

Runs on your deviceTextWorkingNo account needed

What this tool does

Word Counter reports the counts every writing brief asks for: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, lines, unique words and syllables. It also estimates reading and speaking time, gives average words per sentence and average word length, and lists the terms that recur most often.

Word boundaries are less obvious than they look. Hyphenated compounds, contractions, numbers and em-dashes all sit awkwardly between conventions, and different tools genuinely disagree. This one treats a run of letters or digits as a word, keeping internal apostrophes and hyphens joined, so "don't" and "long-term" each count once and stray punctuation never counts at all.

Reading and speaking speeds are yours to set. The defaults are 238 words per minute silently and 150 spoken; both are editable fields, so you can dial in the pace of your own delivery or a slower technical readership.

How to use it

  1. Paste your text. Type or paste into the input box. Counts update when you run it, so nothing is sent as you type.
  2. Adjust the speeds if you want. Reading speed, speaking speed and how many frequent terms to list are all settings you can change before running.
  3. Read the breakdown. Words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, lines, unique words and syllables, with reading and speaking estimates.
  4. Check the frequent terms. The recurring-word list shows where you are repeating yourself, which is usually the fastest edit available.

Processing & privacy

Runs on your device. Your file is processed directly in this browser.

Common use cases

Meeting a word count

Essays, applications and article briefs almost always specify one, and being over is as much a problem as being under.

Fitting a character limit

Meta descriptions, bios and ad copy are limited by characters, not words, and spaces count.

Timing a talk

Set the speaking speed to your own pace and the estimate tells you whether a script fits its slot before you rehearse it.

Editing for repetition

The frequency list surfaces the crutch words you stopped noticing several drafts ago.

Questions

Is my text uploaded?
No. Counting happens in this browser tab. That matters because drafts are often confidential — a cover letter, an unpublished article, a legal note — and none of it leaves your device.
Why does the count differ from Word?
Different tools split words differently. Here a word is a run of letters or digits, so a lone "&" or "—" counts as nothing while "state-of-the-art" counts as one. Word processors that count some symbols as words will report slightly more.
How is reading time worked out?
Word count divided by the words-per-minute figures in the settings — 238 silent and 150 spoken by default. Those defaults are research averages rather than a measurement of you, so change them if your own pace differs.
Do characters include spaces?
Both figures are shown. Platforms differ — Twitter/X counts spaces, some ad platforms do not — so check which limit you are working to.
What is in the frequent-terms list?
By default common words like "the" and "of" are skipped so the list shows content words; a setting turns that filter off. The list length defaults to ten and can go up to a hundred.
Does it count in other languages?
Whitespace-separated languages count correctly. Chinese, Japanese and Thai do not put spaces between words, so the whole run reads as one word and the word count will be badly wrong; character counts stay accurate. Syllable counts are English-only heuristics and mean little in other languages.

Related tools