Paste your text below and instantly count words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and estimated reading time — perfect for essays, articles and social media posts.
| Words | 0 |
| Characters | 0 |
| Characters (no spaces) | 0 |
| Sentences | 0 |
| Paragraphs | 0 |
| Reading time | 0 min |
Just type or paste your text — the counts update automatically as you type. Use Clear to start over.
A word counter counts the words, characters, sentences and paragraphs in any text. Writers, students, bloggers, teachers and social media users all need to know how long a piece of text is. Essays often have a word limit, social media posts have a character limit, and articles need to be the right length for readers. This free word counter shows all the counts instantly as you type or paste, with no sign-up and no download.
Counting words by hand is slow and easy to get wrong, especially in a long document. This tool counts for you and also shows the reading time, so you know how long it will take someone to read your text. It is useful for school essays, job applications, CVs, blog posts, emails, captions and video scripts. Because the counting happens in your browser, your text stays private and is never uploaded anywhere.
Take the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." This word counter shows 9 words and 44 characters, including spaces. A 500-word essay takes about 2 to 3 minutes to read at a normal speed of 200 words per minute, and a 1,000-word article takes about 5 minutes. Many school essays are 500 to 1,000 words, a short blog post is often 800 to 1,500 words, and a social media caption is usually under 50 words. Paste your own text above to see its counts right away.
Words are counted by splitting the text at spaces: every group of letters separated by a space, a line break or a tab counts as one word. Characters are counted two ways: with spaces and without spaces, because some forms and apps count them differently. Sentences are counted by full stops, question marks and exclamation marks, and paragraphs are counted by line breaks. Reading time is estimated at 200 words per minute, which is the average reading speed for an adult reading in English.
Check limits before you submit. Paste your essay or application into the counter first, so you know you are inside the word or character limit. Watch the character count for social media. Some platforms count every letter, space and emoji, so use the "characters" count, not the word count. Use reading time for scripts. A 1,000-word video script takes about 5 minutes to speak, and a 300-word script takes about 90 seconds. Cut extra words to hit a limit. If you are over the limit, remove filler words like "very", "really" and "just" first. Count headings too. Titles and headings are part of your text, so include them when you paste.
Paste this sentence into the box above: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." The word counter shows 9 words and 44 characters, including spaces and the full stop. Without spaces it is 36 characters. Now paste a 500-word essay: the counter shows 500 words and a reading time of about 2.5 minutes, because the average person reads about 200 words per minute. Try a short social media caption next and watch the character count, which matters when a platform limits your post length.
Counting words by hand. Hand counting is slow and easy to get wrong in a long document, so always use the tool. Forgetting the character limit. A post can be under the word limit but over the character limit, so check both numbers. Counting the title twice. If you paste the title and the text together, the title's words are counted too, so paste only what you want counted. Trusting the reading time for slow readers. The reading time assumes 200 words per minute; children and language learners read more slowly. Leaving extra spaces. Extra spaces do not change the word count, but they do change the character count, so tidy your text first.
Pro Tip: For a speech, aim for about 130 words per minute of speaking time, which is slower than reading time, because speaking is slower than silent reading.
Note: A sentence is counted when it ends with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark. Abbreviations like "Dr." can be counted as extra sentences.
Is my text saved anywhere? No. Counting happens in your browser only. Your text never leaves your device and is never sent to our servers.
What is reading time based on? An average reading speed of 200 words per minute for an adult reading English. Fast readers may finish sooner and slow readers may take longer.
How are words counted? Words are split at spaces and line breaks. A hyphenated word like "well-known" counts as one word, and a number like "2026" also counts as one word.
Why are there two character counts? Some forms count spaces and some do not. "Characters" includes every letter, space and punctuation mark, while "characters (no spaces)" counts only letters, numbers and punctuation.
Can I count words in a PDF or a Word file? Copy the text from the file and paste it into the box above. The counter works with any text you paste, from any source.
What is a good length for a blog post? It depends on the topic, but most helpful blog posts are 800 to 2,000 words. Short news updates can be 300 words, while full guides are often 2,000 words or more.
Does the word counter count numbers as words? Yes. A number separated by spaces, such as 2026, counts as one word, just like any other group of letters or digits.
Why does my word count differ from Microsoft Word? Different tools split words slightly differently, especially with hyphenated words and numbers, so small differences of one or two words are normal.