Word Counter
Live word, character, sentence and reading-time counts. Free, private and done entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
Word and character counter
Paste anything — an essay, a tweet, a product description, a speech — and see live word, character, sentence and paragraph counts, plus estimated reading and speaking times. Nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere.
Handy limits
- Tweet / X post: 280 characters
- Instagram caption: 2,200 characters
- Meta description: about 155 characters
- Google title tag: about 60 characters
- LinkedIn post: 3,000 characters
How are the times calculated?
Reading time assumes 238 words per minute (the average for adults reading silently); speaking time assumes 150 words per minute, a comfortable presentation pace.
What does a word counter do?
A word counter tallies the words in a piece of text so you can stay within an essay limit, fit a social post or estimate how long a speech will run. This one updates live as you type or paste, showing words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, reading time, speaking time and the keywords you use most.
Below the text box there are quick buttons to clear the text, copy it, or switch it to UPPERCASE, lowercase or Title Case, which is handy for fixing headings or text typed with Caps Lock on.
How each count is worked out
- Words: any run of characters separated by spaces or line breaks counts as one word. “Well-known”, “2026” and “U.S.” each count once. A dash typed with a space on both sides counts as a word of its own.
- Characters: every character, including spaces, punctuation and line breaks. “Without spaces” removes all spaces and line breaks.
- Sentences: stretches of text ending in a period, question mark or exclamation mark. Abbreviations such as “Dr.” can add an extra sentence.
- Paragraphs: blocks separated by a blank line. A single line break does not start a new paragraph.
- Top keywords: the eight most frequent words longer than two letters, ignoring common words like “the”, “and” and “with”.
Worked example: timing a 1,200-word speech
Using the 238 words per minute reading pace and 150 words per minute speaking pace described above, a 1,200-word script works out like this:
- Reading time: 1,200 ÷ 238 = 5.04 minutes, shown as 5m 3s.
- Speaking time: 1,200 ÷ 150 = exactly 8 minutes, shown as 8m 0s.
Working backwards, a 5-minute slot fits about 5 × 150 = 750 words. Real speaking pace varies with pauses, slides and nerves, so rehearse with a timer and trim if you run long.
| Words | Reading time (238 wpm) | Speaking time (150 wpm) |
|---|---|---|
| 300 | About 1m 16s | 2m |
| 500 | About 2m 6s | About 3m 20s |
| 1,000 | About 4m 12s | About 6m 40s |
| 1,500 | About 6m 18s | 10m |
| 2,000 | About 8m 24s | About 13m 20s |
| 5,000 | About 21m | About 33m 20s |
A few other limits worth knowing: the Common App personal essay allows up to 650 words, a YouTube video title up to 100 characters, an Instagram bio up to 150 characters, and a single standard SMS text up to 160 characters.
Tips for accurate counts
- Paste only what counts. Schools and publishers differ on whether titles, footnotes and references are included; the counter counts everything in the box.
- Watch characters, not words, for short fields such as meta descriptions, bios and text messages.
- Use the keyword list to spot repetition. If one word appears far more than the rest, vary your wording.
- Clean text copied from PDFs. Words hyphenated at line ends can split into two, adding extra words; the AI Text Cleaner helps tidy this up.
- Check Title Case by hand. It capitalizes every word, including “of” and “the”, which many style guides keep lowercase.
More questions
How many pages is 1,000 words?
Roughly two pages single-spaced or four pages double-spaced, assuming a 12-point font and standard margins. Font, spacing and headings change this, so treat it as an estimate.
How many words should an essay be?
It depends on the assignment, so always follow the stated limit. For reference, IELTS Academic Writing Task 1 asks for at least 150 words and Task 2 for at least 250 words, while the Common App personal essay is capped at 650 words.
Does the word counter count punctuation and emojis?
Punctuation is included in the character count but is not a word by itself. An emoji separated by spaces counts as a word, and many emojis count as two characters because of the way browsers store them.
Does it work for Hindi and other languages?
Yes, for languages that put spaces between words, including Hindi, Spanish and French. Languages written without spaces between words, such as Chinese, Japanese or Thai, won’t get an accurate word count, so use the character count instead.
Writing prompts for AI tools? The Token Counter estimates tokens rather than words. You can also tidy pasted text with the AI Text Cleaner or share a link to your finished piece with the QR Code Generator.
Further reading: Word count (Wikipedia).