Word Counter — most accurate online word, character & readability tool
Live counts of words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, syllables and unique vocabulary — powered by the browser's built-in Intl.Segmenter for Unicode-perfect word boundaries and Titus Wormer's syllable.js for true syllable counts. Plus six readability scores, keyword density, bigrams & trigrams, sentence-type breakdown, distribution histograms, four time estimates with custom WPM and a goal tracker with social-media presets. Everything runs in your browser.
Sentence-rhythm flow —
Each sentence is coloured by its word-count bucket. Mix short, medium and long sentences to please the reader's ear.
No data yet
Add text above to see the rhythm.
No data yet
Add text above to see scores.
| # | Word | Count | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No data yet | ||||
Top bigrams (2-word phrases)
No data yet
Top trigrams (3-word phrases)
No data yet
Word-length distribution (chars)
No data yet
Sentence-length distribution (words)
No data yet
What you can use the word counter for
From blog drafting to academic essays, social-media limits to SEO meta tags, sermon prep to YouTube scripts — the only word counter you need.
Blog & article writing
Hit your target word count with a live progress bar. 500w, 1500w and 2500w presets baked in.
Essays & papers
Six readability scores plus exact word counts that match what Word and Google Docs report.
Social-media limits
X 280/4000, LinkedIn 3000/220, Instagram 2200, Facebook 63k, Pinterest 500, YouTube — all one-click presets.
SEO meta tags
Title 60 and meta description 160 char limits with live warnings before Google truncates.
Scripts & speeches
Speaking time at 130 WPM (or your custom rate). Per-sentence type breakdown for narrative balance.
Content analysis
Keyword density, top bigrams & trigrams, lexical diversity (TTR), sentence-length histogram.
How to count words online (3 steps)
Paste, type or upload
Drop any text into the editor, upload a TXT, DOCX or PDF, or just start typing. Auto-save keeps your work across refreshes.
Read the live stats
Words, chars, sentences, paragraphs, syllables, unique words and lexical diversity update as you type. Quick-view pane on the right gives instant key numbers.
Switch tabs for detail
Reading times (custom WPM), six readability scores, keyword density, n-grams, sentence types, distribution histograms, social-media goal tracker, CSV/JSON/TXT export.
Frequently asked questions
It uses Intl.Segmenter — the W3C-standard word and sentence boundary algorithm built into modern browsers — for counts that match every Unicode word boundary specification including hyphenated words, contractions, CJK characters, em-dashes, abbreviations like Dr. and U.S.A., URLs and emails. Syllable counts come from Titus Wormer's syllable.js library.
Yes. 100% free, ad-free, no signup, no daily limits, runs entirely in your browser.
Lexical diversity (or type-token ratio, TTR) is the number of unique words divided by the total word count. A higher TTR (close to 1) means more varied vocabulary; lower TTR means more repetition.
Defaults are 250 WPM (silent reading), 130 WPM (speaking), 40 WPM (typing) and 20 WPM (handwriting). Drag the sliders on the Times tab to match your own pace.
A bigram is a pair of consecutive words; a trigram is three. The N-grams tab shows the top 10 of each — useful for spotting repeated phrases.
X/Twitter is 280 per tweet (4,000 for X Premium). LinkedIn posts are 3,000 and headlines are 220. Instagram captions are 2,200. Facebook posts are 63,206. SEO meta descriptions cap at ~160 characters, SEO titles at ~60. All available as presets.
Yes. Upload a TXT, DOCX (via Mammoth) or PDF (via PDF.js) — extraction runs entirely in your browser.
After the first visit, yes. The syllable library and page assets are cached by the shared HCODX service worker. Intl.Segmenter is built into the browser.
About this word counter
HCODX's Word Counter is built around two pillars of accuracy. First, the browser's native Intl.Segmenter API, which implements the Unicode UAX #29 text segmentation algorithm — the same standard used by Word, Google Docs and every serious NLP toolkit. Second, Titus Wormer's syllable library for true syllable counts.
What that means in practice
- Hyphenated words like state-of-the-art count as one word, not three.
- Contractions like don't count as one word.
- Abbreviations like Dr., U.S.A., e.g. don't break sentence boundaries.
- CJK text is segmented at the script's natural boundaries.
- URLs and emails stay as single tokens.
- Emoji are counted as one grapheme each.
Six readability formulas
- Flesch Reading Ease —
206.835 − 1.015·(W/S) − 84.6·(Syl/W). Higher is easier. - Flesch-Kincaid Grade —
0.39·(W/S) + 11.8·(Syl/W) − 15.59. US school grade. - SMOG Index —
1.0430·√(poly·30/S) + 3.1291. Years of education. - Gunning Fog —
0.4·((W/S) + 100·(complex/W)). - Coleman-Liau —
0.0588·L − 0.296·S − 15.8. - Automated Readability Index (ARI) —
4.71·(chars/W) + 0.5·(W/S) − 21.43.
Privacy
- Your text never leaves the browser. Everything runs locally.
- Auto-save uses
localStoragein your browser only. - The syllable library is fetched from jsDelivr once and cached forever by the shared
/tools/cache-worker.jsservice worker.