Free Word Counter

What this word counter shows

Click into the box and type or paste. The numbers above it update on every keystroke:

• Words, the main number, shown first.
• Characters, with and without spaces.
• Sentences and paragraphs.
• Reading time and speaking time, at paces you can change.

Under the box are a word goal with a progress bar and a table of your most used words with each word's share of the total. Copy results copies the numbers as plain text, and Copy text copies what you typed.

How words are counted

Every counter makes small choices about what a word is, which is why two tools can disagree. These are the rules this one follows:

• A word is a run of characters between spaces that contains at least one letter or number.
• Hyphenated words and contractions count as one word. Numbers count too, so "1,000" and "3.14" are one word each.
• A lone dash, symbol or emoji with spaces around it is not a word.
• Chinese, Japanese and Thai are written without spaces, so for those scripts the counter uses your browser's built-in word segmentation.
• A sentence ends at a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark followed by a space, with exceptions for common abbreviations such as "Dr." and for decimals. A line break before a capital letter also ends a sentence, so headings and list items count.
• A paragraph is any line that contains at least one word. Press Enter once to start a new one.

We ran the counter on some tricky inputs so you can see the rules in action:

If a limit is strict, such as an assignment, a contest or a submission form, check the count in the program they will use as well, since that is the one that decides.

Why your count differs from Word or Google Docs

Small differences between programs are normal. The ones that matter most:

• Microsoft Word shows its count in the status bar at the lower left. Review, then Word Count opens a dialog with page, paragraph and character counts, and lets you include or leave out text boxes and footnotes in the total. If your number is higher than ours, that setting is the first thing to check.
• Google Docs opens its count from Tools, then Word count, or with Ctrl+Shift+C on Windows, Chromebook and Linux and Command+Shift+C on Mac. Select a passage first to count only that part. Headers, footers and footnotes are not included in its count.
• Pasted text can carry extra words, such as menu items from a web page or page numbers from a PDF. If a number looks wrong, check what was pasted.
• Symbols and numbering. Programs differ on lone symbols, list numbers and slashes, which is where most one or two word gaps come from.

Sources: Microsoft Support, show word count and How-To Geek on Google Docs word count.

Turn a word count into minutes

The reading and speaking time cards use a pace you can change. The defaults are 238 words per minute for silent reading and 130 for speaking. The 238 figure is the average silent reading rate for English non-fiction in Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review of 190 studies, which put fiction at 260. The same review found that reading aloud averages 183 words per minute, which is faster than the 130 used here for speaking. The table shows all three:

Type your own number into the pace box above the text if you read or speak faster or slower. Times are rounded to the nearest second, and a talk with slides, pauses and questions will run longer than the arithmetic. For a full tool built around this, see the reading time calculator and the speaking time calculator.

Stay within a word limit

Check the count as you write rather than at the end, because cutting 200 words from a finished piece takes longer than writing it tight. When you are over:

• Cut repeated ideas first. The most used words table shows what you keep coming back to.
• Look at the longest sentences, then split or shorten them. The sentence counter lists them for you.
• Delete filler openings such as "it is important to note that" and see if the sentence still works.
• Shorten, do not compress. Removing every article and connecting word saves words but makes the text hard to read.

If you are short instead, expand a thin section with real detail rather than padding. The buttons under the text box send your text to the summarizer to see a shorter version, or to the paragraph expander to develop a thin section. They are optional next steps and run on your monthly credits.

Set a word goal

Many jobs come with a target: a 500 word summary, a 1,500 word article, a 250 word abstract. Enter your target in the Word goal box, or pick 100, 250, 500, 1,000, 1,500 or 2,000, and the bar fills as you write. It says plainly how many words are left, or how many you are over.

Find your most used words

The most used words panel lists the words you repeat most, with a count and the share of all your words. Common words such as "the" and "and" are hidden by default so the list shows words with meaning, and you can turn that off.

• Spot repetition. If the same word fills your top three, vary it or cut it.
• Check keyword density. If you write for search, you can see how often your main keyword appears. Treat the percentage as a sanity check, not a target. Writing for readers matters more than hitting a number.

Word count or character count?

Use words for essays, articles, abstracts and anything with a word limit. Use characters for things that have a character limit: social posts, titles, meta descriptions and text messages. The character counter checks your text against platform limits. Characters with spaces and without are both on this page.

Your text stays in your browser

The counting happens on your device, in the page you are looking at. Nothing you type is sent to Writingful or to an AI, and nothing is saved when you close the tab. The buttons that open an AI tool are the only exception: if you click one, your text is carried over to that tool so you can work on it there.

What a word counter cannot tell you

A word count says how long your text is, not how good it is. It cannot tell you whether a limit includes headings, footnotes or references, because every assignment and publisher decides that differently. It also counts what you paste, so numbers can include extra text that was not part of your writing.

If you want to know how many pages a count makes, read how many pages is 1,000 words. For book lengths, see how many words are in a novel.

Related tools and guides

• Character counter
• Sentence counter
• Reading time calculator
• Speaking time calculator
• Remove line breaks