Paste or type your text — stats update instantly.
The Word Counter counts words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and estimated reading time as you type. Perfect for essays, tweets, LinkedIn posts, cover letters or any writing with a length requirement.
Paste your draft into the textarea, or just start typing. The counters update on every keystroke: total words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, and an estimated reading time at average pace. The "limits" panel shows how your text fits common platforms (tweet 280 chars, LinkedIn post 3,000 chars, SMS 160) so you can trim before hitting publish. Nothing is sent anywhere — the page works entirely offline once loaded, so you can paste sensitive drafts without worry.
Words are detected by splitting on whitespace and discarding empty tokens — hyphenated phrases like "long-term" count as one word, contractions like "don't" also one. Sentences look for full stops, question marks and exclamation marks (with simple guards against decimals like 3.14). Paragraphs split on double line breaks. Reading time is words ÷ 230 (a widely-cited average for adult silent reading), rounded up; that's why a 100-word post reads in under a minute and a 2,000-word article takes about 9.
Hitting an essay word target, fitting a personal statement under a strict cap, trimming a LinkedIn post to the 1,300-char preview limit, planning a podcast script (≈150 words per minute spoken), or just sanity-checking that your blog draft is the length you promised.