Word Counter

Writing an essay, a caption or a job application with a word limit? This free word counter tells you exactly how long your text is the moment you paste it. It counts words, characters with and without spaces, sentences and paragraphs, and estimates reading time — all without sending a single character to a server.

Because the counting happens in your browser, your draft stays private. That matters for unpublished work, school assignments and client copy. When your text is ready, pair this with the Uppercase Converter to fix capitalisation, or clean up pasted lists with the Remove Duplicate Lines tool before you count again.

How words are counted

A word is any run of letters, numbers or symbols separated by spaces or line breaks. So “well-known” counts as one word and “don't” counts as one word too. Characters are counted twice: once including spaces, once without them, because some forms and platforms ask for one or the other.

Sentences and paragraphs

Sentences are split on full stops, exclamation marks and question marks, so “Dr. Smith arrived.” is treated carefully — abbreviations with a single capital letter and a full stop do not end a sentence. Paragraphs are blocks of text separated by blank lines.

Reading time

Reading time uses the common estimate of 200 words per minute for an average adult reader. A 400-word passage therefore reads as about 2 minutes. Speaking time is slower — around 130 words per minute — so a speech draft needs roughly one and a half times longer than its reading time.

Common limits, at a glance

These are the limits people check most often. When a platform counts characters instead of words, use the “characters” figure above — and remember that spaces usually count too.