Word Counter

2026-09-06

Paste or type your text to see live counts of words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and lines, plus reading time, speaking time and the most frequent words. Add an optional word or character limit to see how far under or over you are.

How to use the word counter

1. Paste or type your text into the box. The counts update as you type, and a sample text is there on your first visit.
2. Read the counts and the times. They use the speeds in words per minute shown under them; change those to suit you or your audience (20 to 1,000 words per minute).
3. If you have a limit, choose words or characters, type the number and read how many are left or by how much you are over.
4. Tick the box in the last card to hide very common English words and see which others you repeat most.
5. Use Copy text, Copy counts or Clear, which also removes the saved copy. Undo is offered for ten seconds after Clear.

How the counting works

• Word. The text is split wherever there is white space (spaces, tabs, line breaks). A piece counts as a word if it contains at least one letter or digit. So well-known, it's and 3.14 are one word each, while a lone dash or & is not counted. Extra spaces, tabs and blank lines never add words. A dash typed with no spaces around it, as in word—word, glues two words into one.
• Scripts without spaces. Chinese, Japanese and Thai are normally written without spaces between words. The tool cannot tell where those words end, so a run of such text with no space in it counts as one word. For those languages use the character count.
• Characters. A character here is what a reader sees as one symbol (a grapheme). Where the browser provides Intl.Segmenter it is used, so an emoji with a skin-tone modifier or a letter with a separate accent counts as one. A simple fallback covers the common cases in browsers without it. A line break counts as one character. "No spaces" removes all white space first.
• Sentence. A sentence ends at a run of ., !, ? or … (with any closing quote or bracket) that is followed by white space or the end of the text. A full stop inside a number, such as 3.14, does not end anything. Text after the last ending counts as a sentence if it contains a letter or digit, even without a full stop. The rule is a guess: an abbreviation such as Mr. or a list number such as 1. ends a sentence, and ... counts as one ending.
• Paragraph. A block of text separated from the next by at least one empty line (nothing or only spaces on it). Two lines directly under each other form one paragraph.
• Line. Every line break starts a new line, empty ones included. Empty text has zero lines.
• Reading and speaking time. Words divided by the speed you set, in minutes, rounded to the nearest second and shown as minutes and seconds.
• Frequent words. Each word is lowercased and punctuation around it is removed, so The and the, are one entry. Ties keep the order of first appearance. The share is the count divided by all words, to one decimal place.

Examples

Example 1. Hello, world! has 2 words, 13 characters, 12 characters without spaces, 1 sentence and 1 paragraph.

Example 2 — where the sentence rule is fooled. Mr. Smith paid 3.14 dollars... Really? has 6 words and 3 sentences. A person would say two: the full stop after Mr is taken for an ending, the decimal point in 3.14 is not, and the three dots count once.

Example 3 — reading time. A text of exactly 1,000 words at the default 225 words per minute takes 1000 / 225 = 4.44 minutes, shown as 4 min 27 s. Spoken at 150 words per minute it takes 1000 / 150 = 6.67 minutes, shown as 6 min 40 s.

Example 4 — a limit. With a limit of 100 words, a 120-word text shows "Over by 20 words" and an 80-word text shows "20 words left".

Example 5 — other scripts and emoji. Привет мир has 2 words and 10 characters. A thumbs-up emoji with a skin-tone modifier (👍🏽) is 1 character in a browser with Intl.Segmenter, although it is made of two code points.

Typical length limits and reading speed

First find out whether your limit counts words or characters, and with or without spaces, then choose the same unit in the length card. These figures are rules of thumb; the real limit is always the one set by the form, the publisher or the teacher.

• A single standard text message holds 160 characters when it uses the basic GSM alphabet; messages with many non-Latin letters or emoji fit fewer, commonly 70 per message.
• Page titles are usually shown in full up to roughly 50 to 60 characters, and search result descriptions are often cut off around 150 to 160 characters. Both depend on letter width.
• Journal abstracts are frequently limited to between 150 and 250 words, but each journal sets its own limit.
• A typed page with double spacing and a normal font holds roughly 250 to 300 words.

Adults reading English prose silently are commonly put at roughly 200 to 250 words per minute. Technical material, reading on a screen or reading to remember slow that down, and skimming goes well above it. Speaking speed for a prepared talk is commonly put at roughly 130 to 160 words per minute. The defaults here, 225 and 150, sit inside those ranges. Treat the times as estimates: they allow nothing for pauses or slides.

Why two word counters disagree

• Hyphens, dashes and symbols. Some counters split well-known into two words, or count a lone & or dash as a word. Here the first is one word and the others are not words.
• Web addresses. An address or email has no spaces, so it is one word here; counters that split on punctuation count several.
• Characters. Many programs count UTF-16 units, so an emoji can count as two or more. This tool counts what you see.
• White space. Some tools leave line breaks or tabs out of the character count, or count a Windows line break as two characters.
• Sentences. Every tool guesses. Abbreviations, decimals and ellipses are handled differently, so sentence counts differ the most.
• Word processors. They may include or leave out footnotes and headers.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my sentence count too high?

A full stop followed by a space counts as an ending, so abbreviations such as Dr. and numbered lists add sentences.

Does the word count include numbers?

Yes. Any piece of text with a letter or a digit in it is a word, so 2026 and 3.14 each count as one.

How are Chinese, Japanese or Thai counted?

Words in these languages are not separated by spaces, so the tool cannot find them. Each run of text between spaces counts as one word. The character count is the useful number there.

Do spaces count in the character total?

Yes in "Characters", no in "Characters, no spaces", which also leaves out tabs and line breaks.

Is my text uploaded or kept anywhere?

No. Counting happens in your browser and nothing is sent to a server. The text and your settings are saved in this browser's local storage so they are there on your next visit. Clear removes the saved text. If storage is blocked, the tool still works but forgets your text when you leave.

Related tools

• Voice Dictation — speak instead of typing.
• List Compare — find what two lists share or lack.
• Typing Speed Test — measure how fast you type, in words per minute.
• Regex Tester — try patterns on text and see every match.
• Percentage Calculator — work out shares and changes.