Word Counter

Essay limits, meta descriptions, job applications and social posts all come with length rules — “no more than 500 words,” “under 160 characters” — and different sites count differently. This word counter shows several numbers side by side so you can match whichever rule applies: characters with spaces, characters without spaces, words, sentences, paragraphs and lines.

Words are counted as runs of letters or digits separated by spaces or punctuation, so “state-of-the-art” and “don’t” each count as one word, and accented words like “café” are handled correctly. Chinese characters and Japanese kana are counted one by one, because those languages don’t put spaces between words. Sentences are detected by periods, question marks and exclamation marks; paragraphs are blocks separated by line breaks. Punctuation is included in the character counts but not in the word count.

Reading time assumes about 150 words per minute and speaking time about 130 words per minute, which is a comfortable pace for presentations, podcasts or video voice-overs. Those figures are deliberately conservative — many people read faster — so treat them as a planning estimate. The word frequency panel lists your five most-used terms, a quick way to spot a word you have repeated too often before you hit publish.

Your text is processed only in your browser; nothing is uploaded or stored, which makes it safe for unpublished drafts. If a publisher or school uses its own counting rules, follow theirs when the numbers differ.