Word & Character Counter
Paste in an essay, caption, or script and get live counts of words, characters (with and without spaces), sentences, and paragraphs, along with an estimated reading time — handy for hitting a strict character limit or pacing a script to a target runtime.
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Words
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Characters
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Characters (no spaces)
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Sentences
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Paragraphs
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Reading time
How it works
- 1
Paste or type your text into the box.
- 2
Counts update live as you type, no button to click.
- 3
Check word, character, sentence, and paragraph totals.
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See the estimated reading time at your chosen pace.
What people use it for
- Checking an article, essay or assignment against a word limit.
- Trimming a meta description or ad copy to a character budget.
- Estimating reading time for a post before publishing it.
- Measuring how much a draft grew or shrank after an editing pass.
Supported formats & options
| Counts | Words, characters, sentences and paragraphs |
|---|---|
| Input | Any text typed or pasted into the box, including multi-line content |
| Word definition | Runs of non-whitespace separated by whitespace |
Key advantages & benefits
Updates in real time
Stats recalculate as you type instead of requiring a manual 'count' click.
Multiple metrics at once
See word, character, sentence, and paragraph counts together instead of switching tools.
Reading time estimate
Useful for scripting videos, presentations, or checking an article's pacing before publishing.
Works with pasted formatting
Paste text from documents or emails and it's counted cleanly without manual cleanup.
Limits & things to know
- Word counts vary slightly between tools because each defines a word differently — hyphenated compounds and numbers are the usual disagreements. Use one tool consistently when a limit is strict.
- Languages that do not separate words with spaces, such as Chinese and Japanese, cannot be counted meaningfully by whitespace splitting.
- The counter measures the text in the box. Pasting from a formatted document brings the text but not headers, footers or footnotes.
Troubleshooting
The count differs from a word processor
Different word definitions. Check whether the other tool counts numbers, hyphenated words or footnote text differently, and stick to whichever tool the limit was set with.
Pasted text lost its line breaks
Some sources paste as a single run of text. Paste into a plain-text editor first, restore the breaks, then bring it here for paragraph counts.
Privacy & data handling
Counting happens as you type, in the page. Your text is never uploaded, which matters for unpublished drafts and client work.
Free Word Counter & Character Counter Online
Count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs in real time as you type or paste. This free word counter also estimates reading time and speaking time, which makes it a practical word count tool for essays, blog posts, meta descriptions, social captions and scripts.
- Live word and character count — totals update on every keystroke, with and without spaces, so you can write straight up to a hard limit instead of checking afterwards.
- Character limits for social and SEO — stay inside the practical ceilings that matter — around 60 characters for a title tag, 155 for a meta description, 280 for a post.
- Reading time and words to minutes — an instant estimate at normal reading and speaking pace, useful for blog reading-time labels, presentations and video scripts.
- Sentence and paragraph analysis — spot the runaway sentences and wall-of-text paragraphs that hurt readability before an editor does.
- Nothing is stored or uploaded — unpublished drafts, client copy and confidential documents are counted locally in your browser and never transmitted.
Free with no sign-up and no length cap. Use the Case Converter to fix capitalisation afterwards, and Text Diff to compare two drafts side by side.
Frequently asked questions
Does the character count include spaces?
Both counts are shown — characters with spaces and without — so you can match whatever limit you're working against.
How is reading time calculated?
It's estimated using an average adult silent reading speed (around 200-250 words per minute), so treat it as a helpful approximation rather than an exact figure.
Is there a text length limit?
No hard limit — even long documents are counted instantly since the calculation happens locally as you type.
Does it count sentences accurately with abbreviations like 'Mr.'?
Sentence detection uses standard punctuation rules and handles most common cases well, though unusual abbreviations can occasionally be miscounted.
Is my text sent anywhere?
No — the counting happens entirely in your browser, so nothing you paste is transmitted or stored.
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