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Word Counter

Count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs, and estimate reading and speaking time, with a top-words list.

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Count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs, and estimate reading and speaking time, with a top-words list.

About Word Counter

Paste an essay, article or caption and get a full statistics report: words, unique words, characters with and without spaces, letters, digits, sentences, paragraphs and lines. It also estimates reading time at 238 words per minute and speaking time at 150 words per minute, and lists your ten most-used words with common filler words left out.

When it helps

  • Checking an essay or application statement against a word limit before you submit it.
  • Estimating how long a speech, video script or podcast intro will take to read aloud.
  • Keeping meta descriptions, bios and ad copy under a character limit.
  • Spotting a word you lean on too often by looking at the top-words list.

Tips

  • Hyphenated words and contractions count as one word, so 'well-known' and 'don't' each count once. Most word processors do the same, but small differences from other counters are normal.
  • Sentences are split at full stops, question marks, exclamation marks and ellipses followed by a space, so abbreviations like 'Dr. Smith' can add an extra sentence.
  • Paragraphs are blocks separated by a blank line. Text with single line breaks only will show as one paragraph.
  • Characters are counted as visible symbols, so an emoji or an accented letter counts as one character.

Good to know

Quick answers about word counter in your browser.

The word count is divided by 238 words per minute, a commonly cited average silent reading speed for adults reading non-fiction. Speaking time uses 150 words per minute, a typical pace for presentations. Dense technical text will take longer than the estimate.

The report gives both. 'Characters' includes spaces and line breaks; 'Characters (no spaces)' leaves out all whitespace. Check which one your form or platform uses, since sites differ.

Words are detected by the spaces and punctuation between them. Languages written without spaces between words are counted as long runs, so use the character count for those instead.

Yes. There is no sign-up, no watermark and no limit on how many files you process.

No. Files are read and processed locally in your browser, so they never leave your device.

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Part of the Text Tools collection.