Word Counter

Words are split on whitespace, so hyphenated words count as one. Sentences end with a full stop, exclamation mark or question mark, and paragraphs are separated by a blank line.

Reading time assumes an average silent reading speed of about 200 words per minute, rounded up to the next whole minute.

A readability formula based on average sentence length and syllables per word. Higher scores are easier to read: 60–70 is plain English, and below 30 is very difficult.

Yes. Counting runs entirely in your browser. Your text is never uploaded, stored or sent anywhere.

Both counts are shown. Characters includes every space and line break, while No spaces leaves out all whitespace. Check which one your limit uses: social posts and meta descriptions usually count spaces, some forms and translation quotes don't.

About 5 minutes at the 200 words per minute the counter assumes. 1,500 words shows as 8 minutes, because the reading time is rounded up to the next whole minute. Reading aloud is slower, so a speech of the same length takes longer.

As a rule of thumb, about 500 words single-spaced or 250 words double-spaced, in a 12-point font like Times New Roman with 1-inch margins. Font, spacing and headings change this a lot, so go by the word count when an assignment gives both.

Yes. Anything between spaces counts as one word, so 2026, a URL and an emoji on its own each count once. A dash with spaces on both sides counts as a word too, while words joined by a hyphen count as one.

Sentences are counted by their end marks, so the periods in abbreviations like e.g. or Dr. and decimals like 3.5 are read as sentence breaks. A run of marks such as ?! or ... counts once. Treat the sentence count as a close estimate.

Each editor has its own rules for dashes, slashes, symbols and footnotes, so counts can differ by a few words on a long document. If a teacher or publisher sets a limit, check the count in the tool they'll use.

The counter measures length the way browsers and many websites do, in UTF-16 code units. Most emoji and some rare symbols take two units, and combined emoji such as flags or family groups take more. Letters, numbers and punctuation count as one.