Word Counter
Count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs instantly as you type or paste your text.
Most Used Words
No words yet
Counting by hand is a waste of a good writing session
Almost every piece of writing carries a number attached to it — a 3,000-word dissertation, a 160-character meta description, a cover letter that has to stay on one page. Guessing at that number usually means rewriting twice.
Paste your draft above and the totals update on every keystroke: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, estimated reading time and the words you have leaned on most.
What each number actually measures
Different tools count differently, which is how two word counters end up eleven words apart. Here are the rules this one follows.
Words
Any run of characters separated by whitespace.
Hyphenated words like “state-of-the-art” count as one.
Characters
Every keystroke, including spaces and line breaks.
A second count without spaces sits right below it.
Sentences
Split on full stops, question marks and exclamations.
Abbreviations can occasionally inflate this by one or two.
Paragraphs
Any block separated by a blank line.
Single line breaks stay inside the same paragraph.
Limits worth memorising
Character counts sit in the panel above precisely because most platforms cut you off mid-sentence. Keep this list handy while you draft.
Three steps, no set-up
Paste or type
Drop a draft into the editor, or start writing in it directly. The counts move as you go.
Watch the panel
Words, characters, sentences and reading time sit beside your text — no tab switching, no refresh.
Trim and copy
Cut until the number is where you need it, then copy the cleaned-up text straight back out.
Who keeps this tab open
Students
Assignment briefs are unforgiving: 2,000 words means 2,000, and markers do check. Watching the count while you write beats discovering you are 400 over the night before it is due.
Writers & editors
Commissions are priced by the word, and house styles cap sections at set lengths. The most-used-words list also catches the crutch phrase you have repeated nine times.
SEO & marketing
Titles, meta descriptions and ad copy all live inside hard character budgets. Draft here first, then paste into the CMS already knowing it will not truncate.
Reading time and speaking time are not the same number
The panel shows silent reading at about 225 words per minute — the usual average for adults on screen. If you are writing something to be said out loud, budget considerably more time.
A five-minute conference talk is roughly 650 words, not 1,100. Divide your word count by the rate you actually speak at, then rehearse once with a timer.
Scripts, voice-overs and podcast intros should always be timed at the slower end.
Sensible lengths by format
Rough working ranges, not rules. Serving the reader always beats hitting a number.
Your draft never leaves this tab
Counting is arithmetic, and arithmetic does not need a server. Everything runs in JavaScript on your own machine.
No upload
The text is never sent anywhere, so unpublished work stays unpublished.
No account
Nothing to sign up for and nothing stored against your name.
No clutter
No pop-ups or interstitials between you and the count.
Pair it with
Keyword Density
See which terms dominate a page, and by how much.
Grammar Checker
Clean up the draft once the length is right.
Summarizer
Cut a long piece down to its core points.
Case Converter
Fix shouty headings and stray capitals.
Paraphrasing Tool
Rework sentences that read repetitively.
Word Cloud
Visualise the vocabulary of a document.
Word counter questions
How exactly is a word defined here?+
Text is split on whitespace, so anything separated by a space, tab or line break counts as one word. That matches how Word and Google Docs count, which is why the numbers line up with what your teacher or editor sees.
Why is my sentence count slightly off?+
Sentences are detected from terminal punctuation. Abbreviations such as “Dr.” or “e.g.” contain full stops, so a document heavy with them can read one or two sentences high. It never affects the word or character totals.
Does the reading time include images or headings?+
No — it is calculated purely from the words you paste in, at roughly 225 words per minute. Add a little extra for pages with charts, tables or code that a reader will slow down on.
Is my text uploaded to a server?+
It is not. Counting happens entirely in your browser, so nothing you paste leaves your device, and closing the tab clears it for good.
Can I count words in another language?+
Yes for anything space-separated, including most European and Indic scripts. Chinese, Japanese and Thai do not put spaces between words, so the character count is the reliable number for those.
Counts update instantly — nothing to submit, nothing to wait for.