Word counter

How to use the word counter

1. Paste or type your text into the box — there's no button to press; every statistic updates live as you write or edit.
2. Read the counts on the right: words, characters (with and without spaces), sentences and paragraphs.
3. Check the reading time (based on ~200 words per minute, a typical silent-reading pace) and speaking time (~130 words per minute, a comfortable presentation pace).
4. Keep editing until you hit your target — the counter is handy to leave open in a second tab while you trim a draft down to a limit.

Common uses

• Hit an exact word or character limit — a 650-word college essay, a 280-character post on X, a 160-character SMS, or a ~155-character meta description.
• Estimate how long a speech or presentation will take: paste your script and read the speaking time instead of rehearsing with a stopwatch.
• Check an article's reading time before publishing, the same number blogs show as “5 min read”.
• Track progress toward a writing goal, like a 1,000-words-a-day habit or a 50,000-word NaNoWriMo draft.
• Compare two drafts: paste each version in turn and note the counts to see how much a rewrite really tightened things up.

Tips & limitations

• A “word” is any run of characters separated by spaces — so state-of-the-art counts as one word, and a number like 3.14 does too. Most word processors count the same way, but always leave a little margin under a hard limit.
• Sentence counting is based on ending punctuation (. ! ?), so abbreviations like “Dr.” or “e.g.” can nudge the sentence count up slightly.
• Paragraphs are separated by blank lines — single line-breaks within a block count as one paragraph.
• For character-limited fields (SMS, tweets, meta descriptions), watch Characters, not Characters (no spaces) — the limit almost always includes spaces.
• Reading and speaking paces vary by audience and content: technical material reads slower than 200 wpm, and nervous speakers often talk faster than 130. Treat the times as good estimates, not guarantees.

How it's built & why it's safe

Counts are computed live in your browser with plain JavaScript string analysis — words are whitespace-separated runs, sentences are split on ending punctuation, and paragraphs on blank lines. There's no server, no account and no autosave: the text exists only in the box in front of you, is never uploaded, and vanishes when you close the tab. The whole tool is one small script you can read with View Source.

Related tools: Case Converter · Diff Checker · Lorem Ipsum

Further reading: Why Toolkit runs entirely in your browser (and why that matters)