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Word Counter — Count Words & Characters Online
Free word counter. Paste text to see live word count, characters, sentences, and estimated reading time.
Word counts that match what editors expect
Word count depends entirely on how you split text, which is why two tools can disagree by ten percent. This counter splits on whitespace, the convention used by most editors, essay rubrics, and CMS interfaces. Hyphenated words count as one, and numbers count as words, because that is how a human reading the page would count them.
Character count is the number that matters when a limit is enforced in characters rather than words: a meta description, a title tag, a tweet, an SMS, or an ad headline. Check the count against the platform's limit before you publish, not after a truncation surprises you on the live page.
Reading time is a rough estimate built from words divided by about 200 per minute, which is a reasonable average for technical prose. It is useful for setting expectations on a long tutorial, and it should never be presented as a precise measurement for a specific reader.
FAQ
- How are words counted?
- Words are split on whitespace—ideal for drafts, essays, and SEO length checks.
- How is reading time estimated?
- About 200 words per minute—a common estimate for blog posts.
- Is my text stored?
- No. The word counter runs locally; refresh clears the page.
- How does the counter handle Chinese, Japanese, or Korean text?
- CJK writing has no spaces between words, so whitespace splitting reports almost no words. Look at the character count instead: for CJK copy that is the number editors and CMS limits actually use, and reading speed is usually estimated per character rather than per word.
- What word count should I aim for in SEO copy?
- There is no threshold that ranks a page. Length correlates with ranking because thorough pages cover more of a topic, not because Google rewards volume. Write until the question is answered, then compare against the top results for the phrase and make sure you cover what they cover.
- Does the counter include punctuation and whitespace?
- Punctuation is excluded from the word and character counts shown for words, and whitespace is ignored as a separator. If you need a raw byte count, for example to fill a database column, use a dedicated byte counter rather than a word counter.