Count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs in real time as you type or paste text. Our free word counter is perfect for essays, blog posts, college applications, and social media posts with strict character limits. It also estimates reading time so you can gauge how long your content takes an average reader.
Our word counter processes everything locally in your browser, so your text stays private. It handles pasted content from Word, Google Docs and PDFs, and also estimates reading time at an average 200 words per minute.
Writers, students, and marketers rely on accurate counts every day. College essays often cap at 650 words, X posts at 280 characters, and meta descriptions at 160 characters — going over means your text gets cut off mid-sentence. Unlike desktop word processors, our counter needs no installation, works on any device including phones, and never uploads your writing anywhere, so unpublished drafts stay completely private.
No. Counting happens 100% in your browser with JavaScript — your text never leaves your device, so it is safe for unpublished drafts, resumes, and private documents.
Any sequence of characters separated by whitespace counts as one word. Hyphenated compounds like 'well-known' count as a single word, and numbers count as words too.
We divide your word count by 200, the average adult reading speed, and round up to the nearest minute. A 1,000-word article shows about 5 minutes.
Yes. The counter works with any Unicode text, including Spanish, French, Urdu, Arabic, and Hindi — anything you can type or paste.