Free Word Counter Online: Real-Time Character & Sentence Count
Paste or type text to count words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, and reading time live. Runs 100% in your browser — free, no signup, no upload.
Word Counter: Count Words, Characters, Sentences & Reading Time
A word counter measures the length of any text in real time. Paste or type into the box above and it shows words, characters (including spaces), sentences, paragraphs, and an estimated reading time at 200 words per minute. It updates on every keystroke, runs 100% in your browser, and is free with no signup or upload.
How to count words in your text
- Type directly in the Enter Text box, or paste a draft, email, essay, or post.
- Read the live Statistics panel — words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, and reading time refresh instantly.
- Watch the Characters value against a platform limit, such as 280 for an X post or 160 for a meta description.
- Use Reading Time to check your article fits the attention span you are writing for.
- Press Copy to grab the text, or Clear to empty the box and start over.
How the counts are actually calculated
Each metric comes from a specific rule, not a black box. Words are counted by trimming the text and splitting it on runs of whitespace (/\s+/), so any number of spaces, tabs, or newlines between two words still counts as one gap. Characters is the raw string length, including every space, tab, and line break — the same figure word processors and social platforms use to enforce limits.
Sentences are counted by splitting on periods, exclamation marks, and question marks (/[.!?]+/). Paragraphs are counted by splitting on blank lines (/\n+/). Reading time divides the word count by 200 words per minute and rounds up, following the convention popularized by Medium and most reading-time widgets. Whitespace is defined the same way browsers define it, per the MDN regular-expression character classes spec (\s matches space, tab, newline, carriage return, and form feed).
"The average silent reading rate for adults in English is 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 words per minute for fiction."— Brysbaert, Journal of Memory and Language (2019), a meta-analysis of 190 studies and 18,573 participants.
Worked examples: input → counts
Plain sentence
The quick brown fox jumps.
5 words · 26 characters · 1 sentence · 1 paragraph · ~1 min read
Hyphen & number
well-known 100 200
3 words — "well-known" is one word; "100" and "200" are two more.
Edge case · abbreviations and decimals
Dr. Smith paid $3.50 to Mr. Lee.
Reads as one human sentence but counts as 4. Every period triggers a split, so "Dr.", "3.50", and "Mr." each add a phantom sentence. Decimals, abbreviations, and ellipses inflate the sentence count — trust words and characters for hard limits.
Platform length limits reference
Watch the live Characters or Words value against the target before you publish. Limits below are the current hard caps or widely cited optima.
| Platform / type | Limit | Unit | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| X (Twitter) post | 280 | characters | URLs count as 23; emoji count as 2. Premium allows 25,000. |
| Meta description | 155–160 | characters | Over 160 risks truncation in Google results. |
| Title tag | 50–60 | characters | Front-load the keyword before the cutoff. |
| SEO article | 1,500–2,500 | words | Depth over length; only as long as the topic needs. |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 | characters | First ~140 show before the "see more" fold. |
Why 200 wpm, and the keyword-density math nobody shows
This tool uses 200 wpm for reading time even though the 2019 Brysbaert meta-analysis pegs the real adult average at about 238 wpm for non-fiction. The lower number is deliberate: it pads the estimate so the slowest readers in your audience are still covered. A 1,000-word article therefore shows ~5 min here versus ~4 min at the measured average. Since reading time rounds up with Math.ceil, even a single word reports ~1 min.
For SEO, the metric writers actually want from a word counter is keyword density: occurrences divided by total words, times 100. A phrase used 8 times in a 400-word post is (8 / 400) × 100 = 2%. Aim for roughly 1–2%. Google's John Mueller has said density "is not a ranking factor" — treat anything above ~3% as a stuffing warning, not a goal. Use the live Words count as the denominator.
Runs 100% in your browser
Your text never leaves your device. All counting runs locally in JavaScript and copying uses your browser's native clipboard — no uploads, nothing leaves your device. I tested it on a 50,000-word manuscript, on single tweets, on Markdown with code fences, and on text with em dashes, decimals, and abbreviations. The counts stay instant, and the sentence splitter does over-count on "Dr." and "3.50" — documented above so you are not caught out.
Frequently asked questions
Is this word counter free?
Yes — 100% free with no signup and no daily cap. Counting runs entirely in your browser, so anyone can use it without registration.
Does my text get uploaded anywhere?
No. Every metric is computed locally with JavaScript. Your text is never sent to a server, so the tool keeps working offline once the page loads.
Does the character count include spaces?
Yes. Characters is the raw length of your text, including spaces, tabs, and line breaks — the same figure X and word processors use to enforce limits.
Why does the sentence count look too high?
Sentences split on every period, "!", and "?". Abbreviations like "Dr." and decimals like "3.50" each add a phantom sentence, so the figure is a fast estimate, not a grammar parser.
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Last updated: June 2, 2026 · Runs 100% in your browser — no uploads, nothing leaves your device.
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