Word Counter - Count Words, Characters & Reading Time 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 or drop a .txt or .md file onto 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 set it anywhere from 50 to 1000 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.