Count words, characters, and paragraphs in your text. Perfect for writers, students, and content creators.
Words
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Characters
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Paragraphs
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Sentences
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Reading time
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Speaking time
0 min
Paste or type text into the box above and this word counter shows the word count, character count, sentence count, paragraph count and an estimated reading time as you type. Nothing is submitted and the text never leaves your browser.
Word count is the unit that matters for most writing tasks: essays and assignments have limits, journalism is commissioned by the word, translators and copywriters are paid by the word, and SEO titles and meta descriptions have practical word and character budgets. Having a live count removes the guesswork.
Words = groups of characters separated by spaces, tabs or line breaksCharacters = every character including spaces; a second figure excludes spacesSentences = runs of text ending in . ! or ?Paragraphs = blocks of text separated by one or more blank linesReading time = words ÷ 238 (average adult silent reading speed, in minutes)Speaking time = words ÷ 130 (average speaking pace, in minutes)9 words, 43 characters with spaces, 35 without. One sentence. Reading time rounds to under a second.
At 238 words per minute that is about 2 minutes 6 seconds of reading, or roughly 3 minutes 50 seconds read aloud.
The limit is 280 characters, not words. A 280-character post is usually 45–55 English words. Use the character figure here, not the word figure.
"mother-in-law" counts as one word because it has no spaces. "don't" is one word. "New York" is two words.
Any sequence of characters bounded by whitespace counts as one word. Hyphenated compounds such as "well-known" and contractions such as "can't" count as a single word; "New York" counts as two.
For ordinary prose it matches closely. Small differences can appear around numbers with units, URLs, em dashes and lists, because each program has slightly different splitting rules.
Words divided by 238 words per minute, the average adult silent reading speed for English. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute. Both are estimates — technical text reads slower.
Yes for space-separated languages such as Spanish, French and German. Languages that do not put spaces between words, like Chinese and Japanese, are better measured by character count.
No practical limit. Very large documents (hundreds of thousands of words) may update slightly slower on older devices.
Yes. The text stays in your browser and is never uploaded or logged.