Word → counter
Words, characters, sentences and reading time update as you type, with the keywords you lean on hardest and a meter for the limit you are writing to — a post, a meta description, a title tag or an SMS.
- Counts
- words · chars · sentences
- Time
- read 238 wpm · speak 140 wpm
- Scripts
- emoji & non-Latin aware
Your text
Counts
Worth knowing
A character is what you see
🇮🇳 is one character here, although it is two code points and four UTF-16 units.
Characters are counted as grapheme clusters, the way a reader would count them. The UTF-16
length under the figures is what JavaScript's .length and many databases see.
Words in any script
Word boundaries come from the browser's Intl.Segmenter, which handles contractions,
hyphens and languages written without spaces, such as Chinese, Japanese and Thai. Emoji and
punctuation are never counted as words.
Where the times come from
Reading time uses 238 words per minute, the average adult silent-reading speed for non-fiction found in a 2019 review of 190 studies. Speaking time uses 140 wpm, a comfortable presentation pace. Technical text and slides run slower.
Keyword density is a mirror, not a target
It shows the words you repeat most, which is useful for catching a crutch word or checking a page is about what you think it is. Search engines do not reward a particular percentage; stuffing a keyword reads badly and can hurt.
SMS has two alphabets
Plain text fits 160 characters per message. One emoji, curly quote or non-Latin letter switches the whole message to UCS-2 and the limit drops to 70 — the SMS preset shows which applies and how many parts it will be sent in.
Nothing is uploaded
The counting happens in this tab as you type. Drafts, essays and client copy never leave your browser, and there is no account or limit on length.
Questions
How are words counted?
A word is a run of letters or digits, so don't, e-mail and
3.14 each count once, and punctuation or emoji on their own do not count. For
languages without spaces the browser's dictionary-based word breaking is used.
Does "characters" include spaces?
Characters includes spaces and line breaks; "No spaces" leaves all whitespace out. Most platform limits (X, meta descriptions, form fields) count spaces, so the first figure is usually the one to check.
Why does another tool give a different number?
Tools disagree on hyphenated words, numbers, URLs and emoji. Microsoft Word, for instance, counts anything between spaces as a word, including a lone dash. Differences of a few percent on real text are normal.
How many words is a 5-minute speech?
At 130–150 words per minute, about 650–750 words. Paste your script and the speaking time is shown directly.