Word & Character Counter
Words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, reading time. All the numbers.
What this does
Paste text, see the numbers. Words, characters (with and without spaces), sentences, paragraphs, and estimated reading time. Updates as you type.
Common use cases
Hitting a word limit. College essays, cover letters, grant proposals. You need exactly 500 words and you're at 487. Or 523. Either way, you need to know.
Social media posts. Character count keeps you from getting truncated mid-thought.
Estimating reading time. Blog posts, documentation, newsletters. Knowing your piece takes 4 minutes to read helps you decide if it needs trimming.
Things to know
Reading time assumes roughly 238 words per minute, which is the average adult reading speed for English. Technical content usually reads slower.
Character count includes everything: letters, spaces, punctuation, emoji. "Characters without spaces" gives you the count editors and translators care about. Sentence count looks for periods, question marks, and exclamation points, so abbreviations might throw it off slightly.
Privacy
Your text never leaves your browser. We count locally. Your drafts, your journal entries, your passive-aggressive emails stay between you and your screen.
Questions
Does it count characters with and without spaces?
Both. You get the total with everything included, plus a characters-without-spaces number, which is the one editors and translators usually want. Emoji and accented characters count correctly too.
How is reading time calculated?
It assumes about 238 words per minute, the average adult reading speed for English. Dense technical writing reads slower, so treat it as a sane estimate, not a stopwatch.
How many pages is 500 words?
Roughly one page single-spaced, or two double-spaced, in a standard 12-point font. Margins and font choice move that around, so when a teacher or editor gives a page count, ask whether they actually mean a word count.
Why is my count different from Microsoft Word's?
Different tools draw the line between words differently, especially around hyphens, numbers, and symbols. The gap is usually a word or two. If a hard limit is on the line, count with whatever tool will be judging you.