Count words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and estimate reading time
How it works
Counts words, characters with and without spaces, sentences and paragraphs, and estimates reading and speaking time from the word total. The figures look objective, but each one rests on a tokenising decision, and tools that make different decisions return different totals for identical text.
- Word counts disagree because tools disagree on what a word is. This one splits on whitespace, so "mother-in-law" counts as one and "3.5" counts as one. A counter splitting on punctuation returns three and two for the same input. Microsoft Word, Google Docs and a journal submission portal can each produce a different total for the same document, which is worth checking before a hard limit rather than after.
- Characters with spaces is the count used by publishers, subtitling systems and per-character translation rates; characters without spaces is what most academic limits mean. On ordinary English prose the two differ by around one character in six, which is more than enough to fail a submission. Confirm which one a limit refers to before trimming.
- A character count always counts some unit, and the unit is rarely stated. This tool reports JavaScript string length, which counts UTF-16 code units. A single emoji outside the basic plane is two of those, and a composed one such as a waving hand with a skin-tone modifier is four code units, two code points and one grapheme that the reader sees as a single character. Text carrying emoji, combining accents, or scripts that use them will not match a count taken anywhere else.
- Sentences here are counted as runs of . ! and ?, which over-counts abbreviations and decimals: "Dr. Smith paid $3.50." scores as three sentences. Reading time assumes 200 words per minute and speaking time 130, both defensible averages for English that say nothing about a particular reader or a particular text.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Word Counter is free for personal projects, client work, or anything else, with no attribution required and no usage cap.
Word Counter processes your input directly in the browser rather than uploading it anywhere. That also means it keeps working if your connection drops after the page has loaded. If you notice different behavior, let us know with the feedback button in the bottom-right corner.