Free Online Word and Character Counter

How to use the word counter

1. Type in the text box, or paste text from a document, email or website.
2. Read the live totals next to the editor. They update with every change.
3. Use Copy text to copy your edited text, or Clear to start again.

What each number means

• Words – sequences of letters or digits, separated by spaces or punctuation.
• Characters – every visible character plus spaces and line breaks.
• Characters (no spaces) – the same count with all whitespace removed. Some publishers and translators price work using this number.
• Sentences – text segments ending in a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark, or the end of the text. Abbreviations such as “e.g.” can occasionally be read as a sentence end.
• Paragraphs – each block of text separated by a line break. Blank lines are ignored.
• Reading and speaking time – estimates based on average reading (238 words per minute) and speaking (140 words per minute) speeds.

Common length limits

Word and character counts matter whenever a platform or assignment sets a limit. A few examples:

• Search result titles are often shortened after about 50–60 characters, and meta descriptions after about 150–160.
• Posts on X are limited to 280 characters for standard accounts.
• School and university essays usually set a word range, such as 1,500–2,000 words. Check whether your instructor counts headings and references.

If you need to change capitalisation after editing, the Case Converter converts text to uppercase, lowercase, title case or sentence case.

Example

The sentence It’s a well-known fact: tools save time. contains 8 words (“It’s” is one word, “well-known” is two), 40 characters including spaces, 34 without spaces, and 1 sentence.