About

About CountWordsFree

CountWordsFree is a set of small, exact text counters: words, characters, letters, sentences, paragraphs, reading time, keyword density — and an SMS segment calculator that applies the real carrier encoding rules instead of a rough character count.

Our counting rules, in the open

Every counter on the internet disagrees with the others by a little. We would rather state our rules than pretend there is one true count. A word is a run of letters or digits, with internal apostrophes and hyphens keeping it whole (don't, well-known = 1 word each). Characters are Unicode code points, so an emoji counts once. Sentences end at terminal punctuation, with decimals and common abbreviations protected. Paragraphs are blocks separated by blank lines.

The constants we use: silent reading at 238 words per minute (the average for English non-fiction in the reading-research literature) and speaking at 130 wpm for presentations; page estimates of 500 words per single-spaced page and 250 double-spaced at 12 pt with standard margins; SMS segmentation per GSM 03.38 — the GSM-7 basic and extension alphabets, 160/153 units for GSM-7 messages and 70/67 for UCS-2. Platform character limits are the commonly published values as of 2026; platforms change them, so each is labelled with a note rather than presented as permanent truth.

Private by construction

Every tool runs entirely in your browser. There is no upload, no account, and no server copy of anything you paste. That is not a policy promise bolted onto a data pipeline — there is simply no pipeline.

Part of a small tool family

CountWordsFree is built by Jimmy | ORBITFRAME and sits alongside the other free tools linked in the footer — date calculators, a concrete calculator, QR codes and more, each built to the same standard: the tool works on the first screen, the method is stated on the page, and the numbers are checkable.