Word counter
Count words as you type — and everything around them
Paste or write below. You get the word count, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and lines, how long the text takes to read (238 words a minute) and to say out loud (130 a minute), your ten most-used keywords, and progress against a word goal. It all happens in your browser; the text never leaves the page.
Top keywords
Most frequent meaningful words (common stopwords removed). Density is the word's share of all words in the text.
Start typing to see your keywords.
How the numbers are counted
A word is a run of letters or digits. An apostrophe or hyphen inside a word keeps it together, so don't and well-known each count as one word — the same convention word processors use. Characters are counted two ways: with everything included, and with all whitespace stripped out. Characters are Unicode code points, so an emoji counts as one character here (some apps count it as two; the character counter explains the difference). Sentences end at a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark; decimals like 3.5 and common abbreviations like Dr. are protected so they don't split a sentence in half. Paragraphs are blocks separated by a blank line.
Reading time uses 238 words per minute, the average silent reading speed for English non-fiction found in research reviews. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute, a comfortable presentation pace. Both are estimates — poetry, technical text and second-language readers all run slower.
Need a different count?
SMS length calculator
Sending a text message? One stray emoji or curly quote can double what a message costs. This tool applies the real GSM-7 / UCS-2 segment rules — 160/153 characters for plain texts, 70/67 the moment any character falls outside the GSM-7 alphabet — and shows you exactly which characters are responsible.
Character counter
Working to a platform limit — an X post, an Instagram bio, a meta description? The character counter lines your text up against the commonly published limits and shows how much room you have left.
Frequently asked questions
- Is my text uploaded or saved?
- No. Every count on this page is computed by JavaScript running in your browser tab. Close the tab and the text is gone; there is no account and no server copy.
- How many words is a typical page?
- About 500 words single-spaced or 250 double-spaced at 12 pt with standard margins. The words-to-pages converter has the full table.
- Why does my word count differ from Word or Google Docs?
- Usually by a word or two. Counters disagree on edge cases: numbers with commas, hyphenated compounds, em-dashes joining words, and text in headers or footnotes. Our rule is stated above so you can predict it.
- What reading speed should I use for a speech?
- 130 words per minute is a safe planning pace for presentations; audiobook narration runs closer to 150–160. You can change the pace on the reading time calculator.
Batch documents, saved goals across files, and exportable reports for editors and content teams. The free tools above stay free; Pro is a heads-up, not a checkout — no payment is taken today.