Word counter
Paste your text to get the word count, characters and sentences right away. Everything runs in your browser: your text is never uploaded or stored.
- Words
- 0
- Characters
- 0
- Characters without spaces
- 0
- Sentences
- 0
- Paragraphs
- 0
- Silent reading
- 0 min
- Reading aloud
- 0 min
How words are counted
- Hyphenated words count as one: “well-known”, “mother-in-law”.
- Contractions count as one: “don’t”.
- Numbers count as one word, even with a space inside: “1 000”.
- Dashes and other marks are not words. Word counts a standalone dash as a word, so its total can be slightly higher.
There is no single standard for counting words, so tools can differ slightly. If a publisher or a university sets a limit, check which tool they use.
How long a text takes to read
Reading time assumes 238 words per minute for silent reading and 183 for reading aloud. These are adult averages for English from a 2019 meta-analysis by Marc Brysbaert. To find your own number, take the reading speed test.
Counting words on a paper page?
Photograph it in SpeedReading. The app recognizes the text on your phone and counts the words from the photo.
Questions
Is my text sent anywhere?
No. Counting happens in your browser. The page sends nothing to a server and doesn’t store your text.
How many words are on a page?
It depends on the font and the margins. For an exact answer, paste the text of one page into the counter above.
Is there a length limit?
There’s no separate limit. Only your browser sets one.
Sources
- Brysbaert M. How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 2019, vol. 109, 104047. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047.