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Word Counter

Paste an essay, a post or a script and the numbers update as you type.

Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded or stored.

Keyword density

Words and phrases used more than once. A phrase never runs across the end of a sentence. Pick one to find it in your text.

Your most used words and phrases will show here.

Readability

Type or paste some English text to see how easy it is to read.

Five scores for English text of 100 words or more.

Also try:Case ConverterText Diff

How to use the Word Counter

  1. 1Type in the box, or paste text from anywhere. You can also drop a .txt, Word (.docx), OpenDocument (.odt) or PDF file onto the page.
  2. 2Watch the counts beside the box (under it on a phone). They change on every keystroke, so you can cut a sentence and see the difference straight away.
  3. 3Set a goal to reach or a limit to stay under, or pick a platform such as X or a text message in Check a limit to see how much room is left.
  4. 4Check Keyword density for words and phrases you repeat. Pick one to find it in your text, and replace it with Find. Undo takes any change back.
  5. 5Press Clear when you're finished. Your text is only kept after you close the tab if you switch on Keep my text on this device.

What counts as a word here

There’s no official definition of a word, so every counter has to make a few judgment calls. These are ours:

You type We count Why
well-known 1 word A hyphen joins a compound. Microsoft Word counts it the same way.
don't 1 word An apostrophe doesn’t split a word.
fast—cheap 2 words Em and en dashes separate words, with or without spaces around them.
and/or 1 word There’s no space, so it stays together.
3.5 or 2026 1 word Numbers count.
utilyfe.com/tools 1 word So does a web address or an email address.
& on its own 0 words A symbol with no letters or digits isn’t a word.
我喜欢读书 3 words Chinese, Japanese and Thai don’t use spaces, so your browser’s built-in word breaker splits them.

Characters are counted the way you see them, not the way computers store them. An accented é is one character, and so is a thumbs-up emoji with a skin tone, even though that emoji takes up four units of storage. Spaces and line breaks are included in Characters and left out of No spaces.

Sentences end at a full stop, a question mark or an exclamation mark. Common abbreviations such as Dr., Mr., Mrs., e.g. and i.e. don’t end a sentence, but rarer ones can trip it up, so treat the sentence count as a close estimate rather than gospel.

Paragraphs are lines that have text on them. Blank lines are ignored, so text pasted with a gap between every paragraph isn’t counted twice.

Reading time and speaking time

Reading time assumes 238 words per minute. That number comes from a 2019 meta-analysis by the psychologist Marc Brysbaert, who pooled 190 reading studies covering 18,573 people. Adults read non-fiction silently at about 238 words per minute and fiction a little faster, at around 260. It’s slower than the round 250 or 300 you’ll often see quoted.

Speaking time uses 150 words per minute, roughly the pace of relaxed conversation according to the National Center for Voice and Speech. Most people slow down when they present to a room, so if you’re timing a talk, leave yourself some slack.

For a sense of scale: a 650-word college application essay takes about 2 minutes 44 seconds to read, and about 4 minutes 20 seconds to read aloud.

Readability scores, and when there isn’t one

Each score is worked out from how long your sentences are and how long your words are. Long sentences and words with many syllables make text harder to read.

Score What it tells you
Flesch Reading Ease 0 to 100. Higher is easier: 60 to 70 is plain English.
Flesch-Kincaid grade The US school year a reader needs: 8 means a 13-to-14-year-old can follow it.
Gunning Fog Also a school year, weighted more heavily by words of three syllables or more.
SMOG A school year based on how many words have three syllables or more; often used for health writing.
Coleman-Liau A school year from letters per word rather than syllables.

Flesch’s own bands for the Reading Ease score: 90 and up is very easy, 80s easy, 70s fairly easy, 60s plain English, 50s fairly hard, 30 to 49 hard, and under 30 very hard.

Syllables are estimated from spelling, as every online checker does, so a score can differ by a point or two from another tool. There’s no score for text under 100 words, with fewer than 3 sentences, or not in English. The formulas would still give a number, but it wouldn’t mean anything.

Limits you might be writing to

Pick any of these in Check a limit. Limits last checked 14 October 2026.

Where Limit How it’s counted
X post, without Premium 280 A link counts 23, however long. An emoji or a Chinese, Japanese or Korean character counts 2.
Bluesky post 300 Characters as you see them, so an emoji is 1. The Bluesky app shortens long links.
Threads post 500 Characters as you see them.
Mastodon post 500 on most servers A link counts 23. Some servers allow more.
Text message (SMS) 160 153 per part once it’s split. One emoji or letter outside the basic set makes it 70, or 67 per part.
Instagram caption 2,200 Only about the first 125 show before “more”.
LinkedIn post 3,000 About the first 140 (phone) to 210 (computer) show before “see more”.
YouTube title 100
YouTube description 5,000
Meta description about 155 Google cuts by width, not a set number.
Page title about 60 Google cuts by width, not a set number.
Common App personal essay 250 to 650 words Set it as a goal: Stay under 650 words.

The Common App enforces its cap, so you can’t submit an essay over 650 words. A long text message isn’t blocked; your phone splits it into several messages behind the scenes.

Questions

Is there a limit on how much text I can paste?
There's no limit built in. A whole novel works fine; on an older phone the numbers can take a moment to catch up after a very large paste.
Does this tool keep or send my text anywhere?
No. Everything happens inside this browser tab, including reading Word and PDF files, and nothing is uploaded or logged. Your text is gone when you close the tab, unless you switch on Keep my text on this device: that saves it in this browser only, never on a server, and switching it off deletes the saved copy.
Why is my count different from Microsoft Word or Google Docs?
Every editor draws the line between words a little differently, mostly around dashes, slashes and stray symbols. Our rules are in the table above. On a long essay, a gap of a few words is normal. If a strict limit applies, do the final check in whatever software your teacher or publisher uses.
How is reading time worked out?
The word count is divided by 238 words per minute, the average silent reading speed for adults reading non-fiction in a 2019 review of 190 studies. Speaking time uses 150 words per minute, a typical conversational pace.
Why is there no readability score for my text?
The five scores are formulas fitted to English school texts. They produce a number for any text, but under 100 words, with fewer than 3 sentences, or in another language, that number means nothing, so the box says why instead. To tell whether text is English, it looks for common English words such as “the”, “and” and “of”.
Why does X say I have a different number of characters left?
X counts every link as 23 characters, however long it is, and counts an emoji or a Chinese, Japanese or Korean character as 2. Pick X post in Check a limit and we count the same way. A counter that uses plain length can make a post with a long link look too long, or one full of emoji look shorter than X will see it.
What are 2- and 3-word phrases for?
Single words miss repeated phrases like “in order to” or a key phrase you're writing about. Density is the share of your words a phrase takes up: a 2-word phrase used 3 times in 100 words is 6%. A phrase is only counted from words that sit next to each other in one sentence.
Can I open a Word document or a PDF?
Yes: .docx (Word), .odt (LibreOffice and OpenOffice), .pdf and plain text files, all read inside your browser. A password-protected PDF asks for its password. A scanned PDF holds pictures of pages rather than text, so it says there's nothing to count. Old .doc files can't be read here; save them as .docx first.
Does it work for languages other than English?
Word and character counts work for any language, including Chinese, Japanese and Thai, which are written without spaces. Two parts are English only: the list of common words that keyword density can leave out, and the readability scores, which say so instead of guessing.