Word & Character Counter (live)
Type or paste text and the counts update instantly — words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, lines and estimated reading time.
How the counts work
Words are runs of non-whitespace characters separated by
spaces, tabs or newlines. Characters counts every character
including spaces; the "no spaces" variant excludes them. Sentences
are split on ., ! and ? followed by
whitespace. Paragraphs are blocks separated by one or more blank
lines. Reading time assumes 200 words per minute, a common
average for adult silent reading.
Why use a word counter?
Essays, cover letters, tweets, meta descriptions and ad copy all have limits. A live counter lets you trim to the exact length without guessing. Students check assignment word limits; SEO writers hit meta-description character caps; social media managers stay under post limits. Because the count updates as you type, you never have to click a button or leave the page.
FAQ
Is my text stored or sent anywhere?
No. Counting happens in your browser as you type. Nothing is transmitted or saved — close the tab and it is gone.
Does it count CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) characters as words?
For languages without spaces, each non-whitespace run counts as one "word". The character count is still exact, so for CJK text rely on the character count rather than the word count.
What reading speed is used?
200 words per minute. Fast readers may be closer to 300; technical content closer to 150. Adjust your expectation accordingly.
How to use the word counter
- Paste or type your text into the box. Every statistic updates as you type — no button to press.
- Read the counts: words, characters with spaces, characters without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, lines and estimated reading time.
- Use it as a live limit check while writing: the numbers change on each keystroke, so you can see the moment you cross 500 words.
- Copy the cleaned text back out when you are done.
What exactly gets counted
A word is any run of non-whitespace characters, which matches how editors and most submission systems count. Characters are counted twice, with and without whitespace, because the two numbers serve different purposes: character limits on forms and SMS usually count spaces, while typesetting and translation quotes usually do not. Sentences are detected by terminal punctuation (. ! ?) followed by a space or the end of the text; a text with no ending punctuation counts as one sentence rather than zero. Paragraphs are blocks separated by a blank line, and lines are raw newline-separated rows.
How reading time is estimated
Reading time uses 200 words per minute, a common adult average for non-technical prose, and rounds up to seconds under a minute. Treat it as a planning figure rather than a promise: dense technical material, poetry, tables and non-native readers all run slower, and skimming runs much faster. If you are writing for a specific audience, compare against your own analytics.
Is my text uploaded?
No. Counting happens on the text in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere. This is the tool to use for drafts under embargo, unpublished manuscripts, performance reviews or anything else you would not paste into a cloud service.
Troubleshooting
- Count is higher than my editor says: check whether the other tool ignores punctuation-only tokens or hyphenated words; conventions differ slightly between editors.
- Sentence count looks too low: abbreviations such as "e.g." or "Dr." end with a period and can split a sentence incorrectly. This is a known limitation of punctuation-based detection.
- Characters differ from another counter: emoji and accented letters can count as one or two characters depending on whether the other tool counts code points or grapheme clusters.
- Nothing updates: make sure you are typing in the large text area and not in a different field on the page.
FAQ
Is there a length limit?
Only your browser's memory. Tens of thousands of words are fine; the counter does not slow down noticeably below that.
Can it count words in other languages?
Yes for scripts that separate words with spaces. For Chinese, Japanese or Thai, the character count is the meaningful figure, since word segmentation is language-specific.
Does it save what I type?
No. Nothing is written to local storage and nothing persists after you close or reload the tab.
People also use this for…
Every tool below is also 100%% local: no upload, no account, no server copy — the same privacy guarantee you get on this page.
- Turn the finished text into a PDF
Export with the page size and line height you choose. - Normalise the casing
Switch between lower, UPPER, Title and Sentence case. - Convert the word count into an API cost
Roughly 0.75 words per token — see what it costs per model.