Word Counter Online Free
Paste any text and instantly see word count, character count, sentence count, paragraph count and estimated reading time.
How this word counter measures ten metrics from the same block of text
A word counter looks like a single number, but this tool is running roughly ten independent measurements on every keystroke: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, lines, syllables, unique words, reading time, speaking time, and a Flesch reading ease score. Each one uses a slightly different regex or counting rule, and knowing those rules explains why Mr. Smith arrived. can confuse a naive sentence counter.
All counting happens locally in your browser on every input event. Nothing about your draft is ever transmitted.
The counting rules, one by one
& or ... are not counted. Hyphenated terms like well-known, contractions like don't and numbers like 3.14 count as one word. An em dash or en dash with no spaces around it still separates two words. Chinese and Japanese characters count as one word each, the same convention Microsoft Word uses, and Thai, Lao, Khmer and Myanmar text is split with your browser's built in word segmenter.
?! count once. Titles and abbreviations such as Mr., Dr. and e.g., single initials, and decimals like 3.14 do not end a sentence. A heading or list item on its own line counts as its own sentence. Paragraphs are blocks of text separated by a blank line.
Word, and word count as the same unique word. Accented and non Latin letters are kept, so café and cafe stay different words.
The reading speed defaults to 200 words per minute but is a configurable field, since reading speed varies by content type and audience. Speaking time is fixed at 130 words per minute, a figure that lines up with typical conversational and presentation speaking pace, useful for estimating how long a script will take to read aloud.
Syllables and the Flesch score, shared logic with the readability scorer
This tool uses the same syllable counter as our readability scorer. It counts vowel groups, then corrects them with rules for silent endings, common prefixes and suffixes such as -ly, -ment and -ology, and a list of irregular words like people and recipe. Checked against the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary on real web copy it agrees on about 99 percent of words. Total syllables then feed into the 1948 Flesch Reading Ease equation, 206.835 - 1.015 * (words/sentences) - 84.6 * (syllables/words), giving a live ease score and a plain language level label as you type. Very simple text can score above 100 and very dense text below 0; the tool shows the real value. The score is only shown for English text.
| Metric | Rule used |
|---|---|
| Longest word | Tracked by comparing cleaned word length while iterating the word array once |
| Average word length | Total letters across all cleaned words divided by word count, one decimal |
| Average sentence length | Word count divided by sentence count, to one decimal |
| Top keywords | Words of three or more letters, excluding a list of about 120 common English stopwords, ranked by frequency, top eight shown with percent of total words |
hello-world is one word everywhere and quotes, brackets or ellipses around a word never change the result.Extra tools built into the panel
Word or character limit bar
Set a target limit and unit, the tool renders a live progress bar that turns orange from 85 percent and red once you go over, and it tells you how many words or characters you are over. You can count characters with or without spaces, useful for meta descriptions, social posts, or any hard character cap.
Find and count
A separate search field counts every case-insensitive match of your query in the full text, and also tells you how many of those are whole words, so cat in category is easy to tell apart.
- Brysbaert, How many words do we read per minute?, 2019 is the meta-analysis behind commonly cited adult silent reading speed figures used across reading time estimators.
- Flesch-Kincaid readability tests for the 1948 Reading Ease formula this tool computes live.
- MDN on String.split for the regex splitting behavior behind the word, sentence, and paragraph counts.
Limits people write to
Trimming an essay down to a professor's word limit, keeping a meta description under its character cap, timing how long a video script or speech will actually take to deliver, checking a cover letter reads at an approachable difficulty level before sending it, and scanning a draft's own keyword density before you paste it somewhere search engines will index. The find and count field alone is useful for confirming how many times a name or term appears without scrolling through a long document manually.
Questions About the Word Counter
Yes. Completely free with no signup, no limit on text length and no data sent anywhere.
It uses 200 words per minute by default. You can switch to 150, 300 or 130 words per minute, and speaking time always uses 130. Academic or technical text may take longer.
Hyphenated words like well-known are counted as one word, which matches how most style guides count them.
Yes. Set a limit of 280 characters for X (Twitter). The count includes spaces and shows emoji and accented letters as one character each. X counts emoji as two, so leave a little room if you use them.
Yes. Words are split on spaces for languages that use them. Chinese and Japanese characters count as one word each, like Microsoft Word, and Thai, Lao, Khmer and Myanmar text is split with your browser's word segmenter. The Flesch score is shown for English text only.
From the blog
Writing about writing tools
Readability scoring, keyword density and the rest, examined properly.
