Free Word Counter — Words, Characters and Reading Time
Count words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and reading time instantly. Runs in your browser, nothing is uploaded.
- Runs entirely in your browser
- No uploads, no servers
- Free, no signup
- Words
- 0
- Characters
- 0
- Characters (no spaces)
- 0
- Sentences
- 0
- Paragraphs
- 0
- Reading time
- 0 min
About this tool
Paste any text and get an immediate count of words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and estimated reading time. Everything happens on your device as you type — no request is made to any server, so it works offline and your text never leaves the browser.
Writers use this for word limits, students for essay requirements, and developers for checking whether a meta description will be truncated in search results. If you are counting for SEO, the useful targets are 50–60 characters for a title tag and 140–160 for a meta description.
What it does
- Live counts that update as you type
- Characters counted with and without spaces
- Emoji and accented characters counted correctly
- Sentence and paragraph totals
- Reading time at 220 words per minute
- Works offline once the page has loaded
Frequently asked questions
How is reading time calculated?
At 220 words per minute, which is the commonly cited average for adults reading on a screen. Technical material runs slower and light fiction faster, so treat it as an estimate rather than a promise.
Does this count characters the same way Twitter does?
Close, but not identically. We count grapheme clusters — what a human sees as one character — so a flag emoji counts as one. Some platforms count underlying code units instead, which can give a higher number for emoji and some scripts.
Is my text sent anywhere?
No. The counting runs entirely in JavaScript in your browser. You can confirm it by opening your browser's network tab, or by disconnecting from the internet and watching it keep working.
Is there a length limit?
No hard limit. Very large documents — hundreds of thousands of words — may briefly pause while counting, but the tool handles a full-length book without trouble.
Last updated .