Word counter
Count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs, with reading and speaking time, in any language, on your device. Free, with no account or uploads.
Count the words in your text
Paste, type or open a file. The count changes as you write, with the time it takes to read and to say aloud.
Nothing yet: paste, type or open a file.
Your text has
0 words
Less than a minute to read, less than a minute to say aloud
- Characters
- 0
- Without spaces
- 0
- Sentences
- 0
- Paragraphs
- 0
- Lines
- 0
Words a minute, read silently. 238 is the average for adults.
Words a minute, read aloud. 183 is the average.
Common words such as “the” and “of” are left out. A share is how many of all the words it makes up.
No word or phrase is used more than once yet.
A word is everything between spaces with a letter or a digit in it, as Word counts (“e-mail” is one word). Chinese, Japanese and Thai are split into words by your browser. Characters are counted as you see them: an emoji is one.
A little help along the way
Follow these steps. Every option is explained underneath. Everything happens in your browser; nothing you write is sent anywhere or kept.
- Put your text in the boxPaste or type it, or press Open file for a .txt, .md or Word (.docx) file, or drop the file on the box. A line under the box says, as you write, how many words it has and how long it takes to read and to say aloud.
- Say what you want to doChoose an answer to “What do you want to do with your text?”: Count it, Change capitals, Compare two texts, Tidy it up, Sort lines, Find and replace, or Placeholder text. Its panel opens beside the text on a computer and under it on a phone.
- Count itSee words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and lines. Turn on Check a limit to see how much is left of an X post, a text message, a search description or a word target you set.
- Change capitalsChoose UPPER CASE, lower case, Sentence case or Title Case (with its style guide: APA, AP, Chicago or MLA). The panel shows the first line as it will be, and the button changes the whole text.
- Compare two textsPaste the first version in the first box and the second in the second. The page says how many words were added and taken out and shows both texts with what was added underlined and what was taken out struck through, side by side or in one.
- Tidy, sort, or find and replaceEach panel says first what it will do (“Take out 14 line breaks and 3 double spaces”), then one press does it. Preview the change shows the text before and after with every change marked.
- Undo, copy or downloadEvery change is one step: the Undo arrow puts the text back and the Redo arrow does the change again. Copy text puts the text on the clipboard, and the download arrow saves it as a .txt file.
Questions people ask
- How are words counted?
- Everything between spaces that holds a letter or a digit is one word, as in Word: “e-mail”, “co-op”, “don't” and “3.5” are one word each, and a dash standing alone is none. Chinese, Japanese and Thai, written without spaces, are counted by your browser's own word breaker.
- How is the reading time worked out?
- At 238 words a minute for reading silently and 183 for reading aloud, the averages a review of 190 studies found (Brysbaert, 2019). You can change both speeds under More options.
- Is my essay sent anywhere?
- No. The words are counted in your browser as you type; nothing is uploaded or kept when you leave the page.
This page is the Text tools, opened for this one job; every other tool it has is one press away. Each of its settings is explained on the Text tools's own page.
Read the step-by-step guideKeep going
Guides
- How to count words, characters and reading time
- How many words is a 5-minute speech?
- Free text tools: word counter, case converter, diff checker
- Character counter for X posts, text messages and meta tags
- Title case converter: AP, APA, Chicago and MLA style
- Diff checker: compare two texts and find the differences
- How to remove line breaks from text copied from a PDF
- How to remove duplicate lines from a list