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Word counter

Count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs as you type, check a draft against the character limit of 18 platforms, estimate reading or speaking time at a chosen words-per-minute, and rank the words and phrases you actually used. Nothing is uploaded.

Free & unlimited
0 words·0 chars
All processing happens in your browser. No data is sent to any server.

Four counters that used to be four pages, on one. Paste once and switch views: live word, character, sentence and paragraph counts with six readability scores; a character-limit check against 18 platforms from an X post to a Google Ad headline; reading and speaking time at a words-per-minute you choose; and a frequency table that ranks the words and two- or three-word phrases you actually leaned on. The text stays in the textarea — there is no upload step and no save.

Key facts about Word counter

Key facts about Word counter
CountsWords, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, lines
Readability scoresFlesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid grade, Gunning Fog, Coleman-Liau, SMOG, ARI
Platform limits checked18 — X/Twitter 280, Instagram caption 2,200, LinkedIn 3,000, SMS 160 with segment count, YouTube title 100, meta title 60, meta description 160, Google Ad headline 30, and more
Reading speed presetsCasual 200 wpm, average adult 238 wpm, fast 350 wpm, speaking aloud 150 wpm
Frequency analysis1-, 2- and 3-word n-grams, optional stop-word filter, minimum word length, table / cloud / chart views
Word boundaryWhitespace-separated runs, so hyphenated compounds count as one word — the same rule Word and Google Docs use
Sentence boundaryRuns terminated by . ! or ?, which means "e.g." and "Dr." inflate the sentence count slightly
LimitNone. The practical ceiling is the browser tab's memory, not a quota

What happens to your file

The text never leaves the tab. Every count, score and frequency table is computed by JavaScript running on the string in the textarea, in this page, and none of it is written to a file, sent over the network or stored between visits. Close the tab and the text is gone — there is nothing to delete because there was never an upload.

About this tool

  1. 1

    Paste or type your text

    The counts update on every keystroke. Nothing is sent anywhere.

  2. 2

    Read the live counts

    Words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and estimated reading time sit above the editor.

  3. 3

    Switch to Platform limits

    See the same text measured against X, Instagram, LinkedIn, SMS, YouTube, meta tags and Google Ads, with a segment count for SMS.

  4. 4

    Switch to Reading time

    Pick a words-per-minute preset or an audience and get reading, speaking and skim times.

  5. 5

    Switch to Word frequency

    Rank single words or 2–3 word phrases, filter stop words, and read the result as a table, a cloud or a bar chart.

Specs & compatibility
ModesCounts & readability · Platform limits · Reading time · Word frequency
InputTyped or pasted plain text
Scripts supportedLatin, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, CJK and Japanese kana are counted; CJK word counts follow whitespace, so they under-report
Browser supportAny browser with JavaScript — no API beyond the DOM is used
OfflineWorks after first load; no network call is made at any point
  • SMS is billed per 160-character segment for plain GSM text and per 70 for anything with an emoji — the Platform limits view shows the segment count, not just the character count.
  • A meta description over 160 characters is not rejected, it is truncated in the SERP; the limit view marks the cut point.
  • Readability scores are syllable-counting heuristics tuned on English prose. They are meaningless on code, bullet lists or non-English text.
  • Turn the stop-word filter on in Word frequency before judging keyword usage, or "the" wins every time.
  • Speaking time at 150 wpm is the number to use for a talk; reading time at 238 wpm is the one to put on a blog post.
  • Live word, character, sentence and paragraph counts
  • Six readability formulas with grade levels
  • Character limits for 18 platforms, with SMS segments
  • Reading, speaking and skim time at a chosen wpm
  • Word and phrase frequency with stop-word filtering
  • Keyword density panel
  • Runs entirely in the browser
  • Check an essay or assignment against a word-count requirement.
  • Trim a post to fit X, a LinkedIn update or an Instagram caption before publishing.
  • Put an honest "7 min read" on an article instead of guessing.
  • Find the word you have repeated eleven times in a 600-word draft.
  • Size a conference talk by speaking time rather than slide count.
One. Words are counted as whitespace-separated runs, which is what Microsoft Word and Google Docs do, so "state-of-the-art" counts once. An em dash with spaces around it separates two words.
Sentences are split on . ! and ?, so abbreviations like "e.g.", "Dr." and "U.S." each add a sentence. It skews readability scores on text that is heavy with abbreviations.
238 words per minute by default, the median for adults reading non-fiction on screen. The Reading time view lets you set anything from a 115 wpm child to a 450 wpm speed reader, plus 150 wpm for reading aloud.
Spaces yes. Emoji count as the number of UTF-16 code units the platform counts, which for most emoji is two — that is why an emoji costs more than a letter on X and in SMS.
Not here — this page takes text you paste. Convert the file first with the DOCX to TXT or PDF to text tool, then paste the result.
No. Everything is computed in this browser tab by JavaScript; nothing is sent to a server and nothing is kept after you close the tab.
They are the Platform limits and Reading time views on this page. They used to be separate pages competing for the same searches; merging them means one page that does all four jobs.
View all

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