Word Counter and Character Counter
Paste text to count words, characters with and without spaces, sentences and paragraphs, with reading time. Free, your text stays in the browser.
How it works
A word is a run of characters separated by a space, tab or line break, the way Word counts. Characters are counted as Unicode characters (an emoji is one character) and line breaks are not counted as characters. Characters without spaces leave out all whitespace. A sentence ends with a period, exclamation mark, question mark or ellipsis before a space or the end of the text (or the end of a line) and must contain a letter or digit. A period inside a number such as 3.5 does not split a sentence, but abbreviations such as “e.g.” are counted as an end, so the sentence count is approximate. A paragraph is a non-empty line. Reading time uses 200 words per minute and speaking time 130 words per minute. These are common averages, not a standard.
Example: the text “The cat sat.” has 3 words, 12 characters with spaces, 10 without spaces, 1 sentence and 1 paragraph. A text of 1000 words takes about 5 minutes to read (1000 ÷ 200) and about 7 minutes 42 seconds to speak (1000 ÷ 130).
Frequently asked questions
Is my text sent anywhere?
No. The count runs in your browser and the text is not sent to a server or saved. Refreshing the page clears the box.
How does it count characters?
Each Unicode character counts once, so an emoji is one character. Line breaks are not counted. The result is shown with spaces and without any whitespace.
Why can the count differ from Word or Google Docs?
Programs treat hyphens, dashes, emoji and abbreviations differently, and the sentence count is an estimate. Check the length rules of the place where you will submit the text.
How is reading time calculated?
Words divided by 200 words per minute for silent reading and by 130 for speaking aloud. Real speed varies from person to person.
Is there a word limit?
There is no fixed limit. Very long texts can make the page slower on an old phone.
More text tools
Results follow the rules described above and can differ from other counters, especially for sentences, emoji and compound characters. Reading and speaking times are estimates.