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Word & character counter

Paste or type any text to count words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and lines as you write — plus reading and speaking time, keyword density and how it fits X, Instagram, SEO and SMS limits. It works in every language and your text never leaves your browser.

  • Free
  • No sign-up
  • Private — runs in your browser

How do I count words and characters?

  1. 1Type or paste your text into the box (or tap “Try an example”).
  2. 2Read the live counts: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and lines.
  3. 3Check reading and speaking time and the most-used keywords.
  4. 4Watch the limit bars to see how many characters you have left for a post, caption, title or SMS.

How are words, characters and reading time counted?

  1. 01Words = runs of letters or numbers (Unicode word boundaries)
  2. 02Characters = user-perceived characters (grapheme clusters)
  3. 03Reading time = words ÷ 238 per minute
  4. 04Speaking time = words ÷ 140 per minute
  5. 05Keyword density = times a word appears ÷ total words × 100

Words are found with your browser's built-in Unicode word segmenter, the same rules used to select a word by double-clicking. That means words split correctly in languages that don't use spaces, such as Chinese, Japanese and Thai, and contractions like “don't” count as one word. Characters are counted as you see them on screen: an emoji with a skin tone, a flag, or a Hindi or Urdu letter with its vowel marks counts as one character, even though it is stored as several code points.

Reading time uses 238 words per minute, the average silent reading speed for adults reading non-fiction found by a 2019 review of 190 studies (Brysbaert). Speaking time uses about 140 words per minute, a typical pace for a talk or presentation. Keyword density shows how often each word appears as a share of all words; common words such as “the” and “and” can be left out so the real topic words stand out.

Good to know

  • For a meta description, aim for about 150–160 characters so Google is less likely to cut it off.
  • An essay “word count” usually includes every word in the body text but not the title or reference list — check your course rules.
  • If one keyword is far above 2–3 % of your words, the text may read as repetitive; use synonyms.
  • SMS with any emoji or non-Latin letter switches to Unicode, which fits only 70 characters per message.

Word counter — common questions

Does it count spaces as characters?

It shows both: “Characters” includes spaces and line breaks, and “Characters without spaces” leaves out all spaces, tabs and line breaks.

How is reading time worked out?

Your word count divided by 238 words per minute, the average adult silent reading speed for non-fiction (Brysbaert, 2019). Technical or difficult text takes longer.

Does it work for Urdu, Hindi, Arabic or Chinese?

Yes. It uses Unicode word and character rules, so words are found correctly in any script, and characters with marks or emoji count as one character, as you see them.

Why does X (Twitter) show a different count?

X counts every link as 23 characters and counts some characters, such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean, as two. This counter shows the plain character count, which is right for most text.

How many characters fit in one SMS?

160 characters with standard (GSM-7) letters, or 70 if the message contains any emoji or non-Latin letter. Longer messages are split into parts of 153 or 67 characters.

Is my text saved or uploaded?

No. Everything is counted in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server or stored.

Sources

Formulas last reviewed: September 30, 2026 ·How we check our formulas

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