Word Counter
Count words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs as you type or paste. Choose a reading speed for reading time, review the most frequent words, and set a word target to track progress.
Counts update as you type and appear right below. Keep scrolling for a word target, reading time, and the most frequent words.
Reading time is words divided by the selected speed, rounded to the nearest five seconds. A 250-word text at 200 wpm takes about 1 minute 15 seconds to read.
Words will appear here as you type. The list shows the most frequent words in your text.
On this page
A word counter counts the words in any text as you type or paste it, and the counts update on every keystroke. Paste an essay draft, a product description, or a blog post to see words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs instantly, plus how long the text takes to read at your chosen speed.
What the word counter measures
Type or paste text into the Your text box and the five count cards update live. Paste the sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” and the tool shows 9 words and 43 characters.
- Words counts every group of characters separated by spaces.
- Characters counts every letter, number, space, and line break.
- Characters (no spaces) removes spaces and line breaks before counting.
- Sentences splits the text on a period, exclamation mark, question mark, or ellipsis followed by a space.
- Paragraphs counts blocks of text separated by a blank line.
Reading time and speaking time
The Reading time card divides the word count by the speed you choose: 130 wpm for complex text, 200 wpm for average, or 238 wpm for fast reading. At the default 200 wpm, a 300-word article reads in about 1 minute and 30 seconds. A second card always estimates speaking time at 130 wpm, the pace of a normal spoken presentation.
Track a word target
Enter a number in the Target words box, for example 500 for an essay draft. A progress bar fills as you type, the status line reports your current count out of the goal, and the bar turns green when you reach or pass the target. Clearing the text resets the progress but keeps the target you set.
Most frequent words
The Most frequent words panel lists the ten most common words in your text with how many times each appears and its share of the total word count. Paste a page of copy and the list surfaces repeated filler words at a glance. Hyphenated terms count as one word, and punctuation at the edges of a word is ignored.
How to use the word counter
- Type or paste your text into the Your text box. Every count updates as you write.
- Set a Target words number to track progress toward a goal.
- Pick a reading speed to see Reading time for your word count.
- Copy a single statistic with the copy icon in the corner of any count card.
- Press Clear to empty the box and start over.
Word counting limits
Empty text and whitespace-only text show 0 for every count. A very large paste of tens of thousands of words still updates instantly because the counts are recalculated locally in the browser, with no upload. Reading time is rounded to the nearest five seconds, so a short text under one minute shows “less than a minute”.