Word Counter — Count Words and Characters Online Free

Words are split on whitespace, sentences on terminal punctuation (. ? !) and paragraphs on blank-line separation. Character counts are offered with and without spaces, and the line count reflects the raw number of newlines in your text.

Reading time assumes 225 words per minute (typical silent reading pace) and speaking time assumes 130 words per minute (a relaxed presentation pace). Use them as planning guides for blog posts, scripts and conference talks.

Yes. Paste straight from any editor into the input box. Formatting like bold or headings is ignored — the counter operates on the raw text content.

Yes. Whitespace and punctuation splitting work for any Latin-script language and most punctuation-based scripts. For Chinese, Japanese and other scriptio-continua writing systems, character count is more meaningful than word count and is shown alongside.

No. Counting runs entirely in your browser, so confidential drafts, client copy and unreleased manuscripts stay on your device. Close the tab and nothing is retained.

Yes. Both totals are displayed side by side, which is what most academic, journalism and social media platforms use to enforce limits — Twitter counts everything, while many style guides count characters without spaces.

Yes. As well as counting words, it doubles as a character counter and letter counter: it shows how many characters your text contains, both with and without spaces, and updates live as you type — so you can stay inside strict limits for tweets, SMS, meta titles and online forms.

Yes. Open Settings and edit the Reading speed (wpm) field — it defaults to 225, the typical silent-reading pace, but you can enter a different speed to match a slower or faster reader. The Reading time stat recalculates instantly as you type.

For a slower or non-native reader, lower Reading speed to around 150-180 wpm so the estimate feels realistic rather than optimistic. For a presentation or voiceover script, lower Speaking speed to 110-120 wpm if you pause for emphasis, or raise it toward 150 wpm for a brisk delivery — adjusting both together gives you an accurate total runtime for your material.

Yes. Click Copy stats (or the primary action button) to copy every metric — words, characters, characters without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, lines, reading time and speaking time — as one formatted text block you can paste straight into an email, brief or report.

Paste the essay into the box and the word count updates live, alongside characters, sentences and paragraphs — there is no button to press. Use the essay word counter to hit assignment ranges like 500 or 1,000 words, and glance at the paragraph count to spot over-long paragraphs before you submit.

Yes — the live word, character, sentence and paragraph statistics are free to use, with no ads gating the results and no limit on text length. Counting runs entirely in your browser, so it stays instant even for book-length text and your text never leaves the device.

The counter accepts pasted text plus dropped .txt and .md files. For a PDF or Word document, select all, copy, and paste it here — the word count, character count and reading time appear instantly. Formatting is ignored, but headers and footers you paste along do get counted, so trim them first for an exact figure.

No — Word Counter runs entirely in your browser, so what you paste never leaves the machine you are on. That matters if you are checking something that contains a token, a key or customer data. Closing the tab is enough to clear it.

Pasting into a plain-text field drops bold, italics and styles by design — only the characters survive. That is usually what you want here, since the point is to work on the text itself. Keep the styled original open in its own app and reapply the formatting after you paste the processed text back.

Word Counter shows its result on the page. Standard use does not require signup; this workflow does not offer a file download. Published processing allowances and file limits still apply.

No — Word Counter runs in the browser on desktop and phone. There is nothing to install, no trial to start, and no license to buy before you can see whether it does what you need. Try it on the file you are actually stuck with rather than a sample.

A paragraph needs a blank line before the next one, which means two line breaks in a row. A single return starts a new line, and the Lines tile counts it, but it does not start a new paragraph. Add an empty line between your blocks of text and the Paragraphs tile will rise.

Every period, question mark or exclamation mark ends a sentence, so abbreviations such as Mr. or e.g. and numbers such as 3.14 split one sentence into several. Treat the count as a guide. A final sentence without end punctuation is not counted, but text with no end punctuation at all counts as one sentence.

A hyphenated word with no spaces, such as well-known, counts as one word. A dash with a space on both sides counts as a word of its own, while two words joined by a dash with no spaces count as one. The count follows spaces and line breaks only.

Most emoji count as two characters, and some combined emoji count as more. The total follows how the text is stored rather than how it looks. If a platform counts every emoji as one, expect the number here to be higher and allow for the difference.

Reading and speaking times are rounded to whole minutes, with a minimum of 1 for any text. For a more precise figure in seconds, divide the word total by the speed, then multiply by 60. For example, 60 words at 225 words per minute is about 16 seconds.

The counter always measures everything in the box and has no selection count. To count one section, clear the box and paste only that section. Your full text stays untouched in your own document, and you can paste it back at any time.