Word Counter

Count words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and reading time — free online word counter for writers and developers.

0Words
0Characters
0Chars (no spaces)
0Sentences
0Paragraphs
0Lines
0Min read (200wpm)
0Min speak (130wpm)

About the Word Counter

This word counter provides comprehensive text statistics in real time as you type or paste content. It counts words, characters (with and without spaces), sentences, paragraphs, lines, and estimates both reading time (based on an average reading speed of 200 words per minute) and speaking time (based on 130 words per minute, typical for presentations).

Word counting is essential for writers, bloggers, students, and developers working with text content. Blog posts typically target 1,500–2,500 words for SEO performance. Academic essays have strict word limits. Twitter/X posts are limited to 280 characters. LinkedIn posts perform best at 1,300–2,000 characters. SEO meta descriptions should be under 160 characters. This tool gives you all these counts instantly.

The top words analysis helps identify keyword density in SEO content, repetitive language in essays, and the most significant terms in a document. Common stop words (the, a, is, etc.) are excluded from the top words list to surface meaningful content words.

Frequently Asked Questions

How are words counted?
Words are counted by splitting on whitespace (spaces, tabs, newlines) and filtering out empty strings. Hyphenated words like "well-known" count as one word. Numbers and punctuation-only tokens are excluded from the word count.
How is reading time calculated?
Reading time is estimated at 200 words per minute (average adult reading speed for non-technical content) and speaking time at 130 words per minute (comfortable presentation pace). Both are rounded up to the nearest minute, with a minimum of 1 minute.
Does this tool save my text?
No. All counting happens in your browser using JavaScript. No text is ever sent to a server. Your content stays completely private on your device.
What counts as a sentence?
Sentences are counted by splitting on sentence-ending punctuation: periods (.), exclamation marks (!), and question marks (?). This is an approximation — abbreviations, decimal numbers, and ellipses may slightly affect the count.

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