Word Counter
Count words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs, with estimated reading time.
Word counts matter for a surprising range of writing tasks — an essay with a strict word limit, a meta description that needs to stay under a search engine's display cutoff, a cover letter that shouldn't run too long, or a social post approaching a platform's character cap — and manually counting words in anything longer than a sentence is impractical.
This tool counts words, total characters, characters excluding whitespace, sentences, and paragraphs simultaneously, updating live as you type or paste. It also estimates reading time using an average adult reading speed of 220 words per minute, useful for gauging how long a blog post or article will take readers to get through.
Word counting itself is more nuanced than it looks — this tool splits on whitespace to count words, which handles the vast majority of text correctly but can behave differently from other tools on edge cases like hyphenated compounds or unusual punctuation.
How to use Word Counter
- 1
Paste or type your text
Enter the content you want to analyze.
- 2
Read the live stats
Word count, character count, sentences, paragraphs, and reading time all update instantly.
Features
- Counts words, characters (with and without spaces), sentences, and paragraphs
- Estimates reading time at a standard reading speed
- Live updates as you type or paste
- No character limit imposed by the tool itself
Frequently asked questions
Common mistakes to avoid
- Confusing character count with word count when working against a platform's stated limit — double-check which one your target actually restricts.
- Not accounting for the fact that some platforms count characters differently for non-Latin scripts or emoji.
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