Word Counter

What this word counter measures

Paste or type anything into the box and every figure updates on each keystroke:

• Words – runs of characters separated by spaces, tabs or line breaks. Numbers such as “2026” and hyphenated words such as “well-known” each count as one word, which matches how Microsoft Word and Google Docs count.
• Characters – every character including spaces, punctuation and line breaks. This is the figure that matters for Twitter/X (280), SMS (160 per segment), meta descriptions (about 155) and page titles (about 60).
• Characters without spaces – useful for exam and job-application forms that specify a limit “excluding spaces”.
• Sentences – text split on full stops, question marks and exclamation marks followed by a space or a line break. Abbreviations like “Dr.” can inflate this slightly.
• Paragraphs – blocks separated by at least one blank line.
• Reading and speaking time – words ÷ 225 and words ÷ 150 respectively, rounded to the nearest second.

Keyword frequency

Below the counts you get the five most repeated words along with their density (count ÷ total words). Common stop words such as “the”, “and” and “with” are skipped, as are words shorter than three letters, so the list reflects the actual subject of the text rather than grammar. This is a quick way to check whether a blog post is genuinely about its target keyword or whether one word is being overused. A keyword density of roughly 1–2% is normal for natural writing; anything above 4–5% starts to read as stuffed.

Typical length targets

These are conventions rather than hard rules, but they are a good sanity check when a form or editor gives you a limit.

Reading-time example

A 1,350-word article reads in 1,350 ÷ 225 = 6 minutes. Read aloud at 150 words per minute it takes 9 minutes, so a talk with a 10-minute slot should be around 1,400–1,500 words including pauses. Slow the estimate down further for technical or non-native audiences.

Tips

• Blank lines matter for the paragraph count. Two line breaks in a row start a new paragraph; a single line break does not.
• Pasting from Word or Google Docs sometimes brings non-breaking spaces; they are treated as whitespace here, so word counts still match the source.
• Character counts include emoji and Indian-language scripts correctly, but note that platforms like Twitter/X count some emoji as two characters.
• Use the Clear button to reset the box quickly when comparing several drafts.

Frequently asked questions