Word Counter Online
Paste or type any text — instantly see word count, character count, sentence count, paragraphs, reading time, and speaking time. Free, no signup.
Word counts matter because every platform has a hard limit and every writing task has a soft one. Twitter/X: 280 characters per post. LinkedIn: 3,000-character posts, 220-character headlines, 120-character connection notes. Meta descriptions for SEO: 155 characters before truncation. YouTube descriptions: 5,000. Academic essays: 250, 500, 1,000, or 2,500 words depending on the assignment. Cover letters: 300–500 words is the consensus sweet spot. Hitting these targets without obsessive counting is annoying; running constantly over them is worse.
This counter shows everything you might need in real time as you type: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, average word length, reading time (at 200 words per minute, the average for adults reading non-fiction), and speaking time (at 130 words per minute, the recommended pace for spoken delivery). For technical writing or copy where reading time matters more than wordcount — onboarding docs, blog posts, internal updates — the reading-time figure is often the most useful signal.
Everything is in-page. Nothing is uploaded or saved server-side. Your draft text stays on your device, which matters if you're working on confidential writing (legal documents, unpublished manuscripts, internal memos) and don't want it sitting on a stranger's analytics database.
What this tool counts
Paste any text and get live counts for: words (split on whitespace), characters with spaces, characters without spaces, sentences (split on . ! ?), paragraphs (split on blank lines), estimated reading time at 200 words per minute, and estimated speaking time at 130 words per minute.
Frequently asked questions
How do I count words in a document?
Copy all the text from your document (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C on Windows; Cmd+A, Cmd+C on Mac) and paste it into the box above. The word count updates instantly. Works with text from Word, Google Docs, PDFs, emails, or any source.
How many words is a 1-minute read?
The average adult reads 200–250 words per minute silently. A 1-minute read is roughly 200 words. A 5-minute read is ~1,000 words. A 10-minute read is ~2,000 words. Speaking is slower — about 130 words per minute for a natural pace, which is why presentations run longer than their written equivalent.
How many words is a page?
A standard double-spaced page in 12pt Times New Roman is approximately 250 words. Single-spaced is about 500 words. Academic papers often target 250–300 words per page. Blog posts average 300–500 words per screen of text.
What is the word count for common documents?
Tweet: 280 characters (~50 words). Email: 50–200 words. Blog post: 800–2,000 words. Short story: 1,000–10,000 words. Novel: 80,000–100,000 words. PhD thesis: 80,000–100,000 words. LinkedIn post: 150–300 words for best engagement.
How do I count characters for Twitter/X or Instagram?
Look at the "Characters" stat — Twitter/X allows 280 characters per post. Instagram captions allow 2,200 characters. SMS messages are 160 characters (or 153 per segment if over 160). The character count includes spaces and punctuation.
How many words per minute do I speak?
Average conversational speech: 120–150 words per minute. Presentations and lectures: 100–130 wpm. Auctioneers and fast speakers: 250–400 wpm. This tool estimates speaking time at 130 wpm — add 10–20% buffer for pauses and audience interaction.
Can I count words in multiple languages?
Yes — the word counter splits on whitespace, which works for any language that uses spaces between words. It will accurately count words in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and most European languages. Languages without spaces (Chinese, Japanese, Thai) will count differently — the tool counts space-separated tokens, not individual characters or semantic words.