Word / Character Counter
Count words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs live as you type, with a reading-time estimate. Free and private in your browser.
Count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs as you type, with a separate character count with and without spaces, plus an estimated reading time. It is built for anything with a length limit: an essay with a word cap, a personal statement measured in characters, a meta description that has to fit 155 characters, a social post that truncates on a phone, or a translation quoted by the word. The count updates on every keystroke rather than on a button press, which is the difference between checking your length while you write and discovering the problem after you have pasted it into the form. Your text is never sent anywhere — the counting happens in the page.
How to use Word / Character Counter
- Type directly into the box, or paste text you have already written. The counts appear as soon as there is anything to count.
- Read the four counts together: words, characters, characters without spaces, and sentences and paragraphs. Which one you need depends on what the destination measures.
- Check the reading-time estimate if you are judging whether a piece is the right length for its audience, rather than for a hard limit.
- Edit in place and watch the number move, so you can cut to a limit rather than guess and re-check.
Who it is for
Word Counter is for writing to a limit: an essay with a word cap, a personal statement with a character limit, a meta description that must fit 155 characters, a social post that truncates, or a translation quoted by the word. It is used mid-draft, not after, because the count is instant.
How it works
- Characters, words, sentences and paragraphs are counted as you type, with and without spaces, plus an estimated reading time.
- The word count follows ordinary whitespace rules, which is what an application form or a word processor will also use.
- Everything runs locally, so a draft under embargo never leaves your machine.
What it cannot do
- Different systems count differently. A form that counts a hyphenated word as two will disagree, so check the number the destination actually shows.
- Reading time is an estimate at a typical reading speed, not a measured figure.
- It does not count words inside images or comments in a source file.
- Very large pastes are slower, because the count runs in the page rather than on a server.
Frequently asked questions
How is reading time calculated?
It assumes an average silent reading speed of about 200 words per minute. Short passages are shown in seconds and longer ones in minutes. It is an estimate to judge length, not a measurement of any particular reader.
What counts as a word?
Any run of non-space characters separated by whitespace counts as one word, which matches how word processors tally them. A hyphenated compound like "state-of-the-art" therefore counts once, and that is where a strict form may disagree with this number.
Does it count characters with spaces?
Both. You get the total character count and a separate count with spaces removed, which is what matters for limits like meta descriptions and old-style tweets that counted the shorter number.
Why does my word count differ from Word or Google Docs?
Both programs count in a similar way but differ on how they treat hyphenated words, numbers and trailing punctuation. If a form enforces a limit, trust the number the form itself displays rather than a third tool — including this one.
Does it count words inside tables or code blocks?
It counts what is in the text box, so a pasted table counts every cell value as words. For prose that is fine; for a table it inflates the number, and the character count is usually the more meaningful figure.
Is my text private?
Completely. The counting happens in your browser and your text is never sent to a server or saved, so a draft under embargo or an unpublished application stays on your machine.
Is there a limit on how much I can paste?
No hard limit, but very large pastes are slower because the counting runs in the page rather than on a server. A whole book chapter is fine; an entire codebase is not what this tool is for.