Word Counter
Count words, characters, and reading time. Updates as you type. Useful for essays, articles, and prompts where length matters.
Type, see word count live
Words are runs of non-whitespace characters. Hyphenated phrases and contractions count as a single word.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The end.
Words: 11 Characters: 53 Characters (no spaces): 43 Lines: 2 Paragraphs: 1 Sentences: 2 Bytes (UTF-8): 53 Reading time: 1 sec
What you'll use this for
Track word counts for length-constrained writing — essays, articles, prompts, abstracts, and platform posts.
Essay limits
Hit your word target for academic essays, college apps, or short-answer prompts.
Article SEO
Most blog SEO best-practices aim for 800–2000 words — track as you draft.
Prompt length
Budget your prompt before pasting into an LLM. Pair with our token counter for token-level estimates.
Writing goals
Daily word counts for NaNoWriMo, blog cadence, or progress tracking.
How to count words
Paste your text
Drop it into the left editor. The counter updates instantly.
Watch the stats
Word count headlines the strip below the editor. Characters, lines, and reading time round it out.
Toggle grapheme mode
Grapheme-aware counts emoji and accents as one character each — keeps the character side honest.
Copy or download
Save the full breakdown as .txt or copy to clipboard.
Frequently asked questions
A word is any run of non-whitespace characters. Punctuation attached to a word does not split it; hyphenated phrases like "state-of-the-art" count as one word. This matches how most word processors count.
Yes for languages that delimit words with whitespace (Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, etc.). Languages without word separators (Chinese, Japanese, Thai) won't get meaningful word counts — characters and bytes are more useful there.
Yes. No signup, no limits, no ads. Runs entirely in your browser.
Reading time is words ÷ 4 seconds (about 240 words per minute), rounded up to at least one second. Tune mentally for technical or non-native content.
Yes, but code identifiers split on whitespace only — userName is one word, while user name is two. For programming, character or line counts are usually more meaningful.
About word counting
A "word" sounds obvious until you have to define it precisely. This tool uses the practical whitespace-split definition: a word is any run of non-whitespace characters. That matches Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and most editor word counters.
Edge cases
- Hyphenated — "state-of-the-art" counts as one word.
- Contractions — "don't", "it's" count as one word each.
- Numbers — "2024" or "1,000" count as one word.
- URLs and emails — count as one word, no internal split.
Reading time
Reading time is a rough estimate based on ~240 words per minute. The actual rate varies — technical content is slower, casual content faster. The figure is most useful as a relative measure between drafts.