Word and character counter

Type or paste your text and see the counts update live: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, reading time and the words you use most.

  • Free
  • No sign-up
  • Runs in your browser
word-counter

100% private — your text is analysed in your browser and never sent to any server.

Next step

Keep going with your result in another tool. Nothing is uploaded.

How it works

Type or paste your text

Anything from a tweet to a thesis. The counts update as you write.

Compare with a limit

Pick SMS, page title, X or Instagram to see how many characters are left.

Read the results

Words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, reading time and your most repeated words.

Counting words is about more than the number

Most texts have a length target: an essay of 1,500 words, an abstract of 250, a product description of 160 characters, a post of 280 characters, a speech of five minutes. This counter shows all the numbers at once and keeps them up to date while you write, so you never have to paste your text into a word processor to find out how long it is.

What is counted, and how

  • Words: counted by the rules of the language, so a word with an apostrophe or a hyphen, such as don't or well-known, counts as one, and numbers count as words.
  • Characters: counted as the user sees them, so an accented letter or an emoji counts as one character, not as two or more. The count without spaces leaves out all spaces, tabs and line breaks.
  • Sentences and paragraphs: a sentence ends at a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark; a paragraph is a block of text separated by a blank line.
  • Reading and speaking time: estimated from the word count, at 238 words per minute for silent reading by an adult and 130 words per minute for speaking aloud.

Watch a character limit

Choose a reference limit and a bar shows how much of it you have used, and how many characters are left or how far over you are. The list includes 160 characters, the size of a single SMS and the usual length of a meta description, 60 for a page title in search results, 280 for a post on X, 2,200 for an Instagram caption and 3,000 for a LinkedIn post. Platforms change their limits and count some characters differently, for example links and emoji, so use these figures as a guide and check the current rule of the network.

The words you repeat most

Below the counts you get the ten most used words with how many times each appears and their share of the text. It is a quick way to spot an overused word in an essay or to check that a keyword appears in a page. Common words such as the, and and of are ignored by default so the list shows content words.

What it does not do

Word processors and platforms count in slightly different ways, so a figure here can differ by a few units from another program, especially with hyphenated words, numbers and text in languages without spaces. The reading time is an average and depends on the reader and the difficulty of the text. To check the length of a title or description as it will appear in search results, use the title and description length checker.

More text tools

Frequently asked questions

How do I count the words in a text?
Paste or type it in the box. The word count appears at once and updates as you edit.
Do spaces count as characters?
The "Characters" figure includes spaces, tabs and line breaks. "Characters without spaces" leaves them out.
How is reading time calculated?
By dividing the word count by an average silent reading speed of 238 words per minute. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute.
How many characters is a tweet or a text message?
A post on X allows 280 characters and one SMS is 160. Use the limit menu to see how many characters you have left.
Does an emoji count as one character?
Yes. Characters are counted as the reader sees them, so an emoji or an accented letter counts as one.
Is my text stored anywhere?
No. It is analysed in your browser and never leaves your device.

Related tools

More utilities that also run without leaving your browser.

Add a prefix or suffix to every linePut text before or after every line: quotes, commas, tags or a SQL-ready list. Add line numbers to textNumber every line of a text, or strip the numbers that are already there. Anonymise a text before sharing itHide emails, phone numbers, IBANs, cards, IDs and names in a text before sharing it. Clean text: remove extra spaces and hidden charactersStrip extra spaces, odd line breaks and invisible characters in one go. Remove duplicate lines from a listKeep one copy of each line, or find only the lines that repeat. Compare two textsSee exactly what changed between two versions of a text.