Word & Character Counter
Paste or type your text and instantly see words, characters, sentences, reading time and more
Your text
Statistics
Most frequent words
Type some text to see the most frequent words.
About this tool
The word and character counter gives you a live breakdown of any text the moment you type or paste it. It reports the number of words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and lines, plus an estimate of how long the text takes to read and to read aloud. A handy character-limit checker shows how many characters you have left for tweets, SMS messages, meta titles and meta descriptions. Everything runs in your browser, so your text is never uploaded and the tool keeps working offline once the page has loaded.
How to use
- 1 Type directly in the box or paste text you copied from somewhere else.
- 2 Watch the statistics update in real time as you edit, with no button to press.
- 3 Pick a character-limit preset like X/Twitter or SMS to see how many characters remain.
- 4 Check the most frequent words, then copy or clear your text when you are done.
How it works
Characters are counted as Unicode code points, so emoji and accented letters each count as one character. The space-free count simply removes every whitespace character. Words are found by splitting on whitespace; for languages that do not separate words with spaces, such as Japanese or Chinese, each CJK character is also counted so the figure stays useful. Sentences are detected by terminating punctuation (. ! ? as well as the full-width 。！？), paragraphs by blank lines, and lines by line breaks. Reading time assumes about 200 words per minute and speaking time about 130 words per minute, which are common averages for adults.
Frequently asked questions
Does it count characters with or without spaces?
Both. The tool shows the total character count including spaces and a separate count with all spaces, tabs and line breaks removed, so you can use whichever your task requires.
How is reading time calculated?
Reading time is the word count divided by 200 words per minute, a typical silent reading speed for adults. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute, a comfortable pace for reading aloud or presenting.
Does word count work for Japanese, Chinese or other CJK text?
Yes, with a caveat. Those languages do not put spaces between words, so a plain split would treat a whole sentence as one word. To stay useful the tool counts each CJK character individually, but for these languages the character count is usually the most meaningful number.
Is my text sent to a server?
No. All counting happens locally in your browser, so your text never leaves your device. The tool even works offline once the page has loaded.
Can I check Twitter, SMS or meta description limits?
Yes. Choose a preset such as X/Twitter (280), SMS (160), meta description (160) or meta title (60) and the tool shows how many characters you have left or how far you are over the limit.
Related tools and uses
Use the Base64 and URL encoder when you need to encode text, the hash generator to fingerprint a string, and the JSON formatter to tidy structured data. Writers, students and marketers use this counter for essays, captions, SEO snippets and social posts.