Word Count Tool
Count words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, reading and speaking time for any text, live as you type, entirely in your browser.
Your text
A word counter is the quickest way to check the length and shape of a piece of writing, from an article to a title tag to a video script. This free tool counts words, characters with and without spaces, sentences and paragraphs, and estimates reading and speaking time, all live as you type. It is built for writers, editors, students and marketers who need to hit a length, stay inside a character limit, or judge whether a draft says enough without padding toward a number.
How to use it
Paste or type your content
Drop your text into the box and every count updates instantly. There is nothing to submit and nothing to install, and the whole tool runs in your browser so your writing never leaves your machine.
Read the counts that matter to you
Words and characters sit up front; sentences, paragraphs, average words per sentence and the longest word fill in the detail. Reading and speaking times are estimated so you can plan to a time budget.
Edit against your limit
Watch the character count when a hard limit applies, or the word count when depth is the goal, and trim or expand as you go. Clear the box to start fresh on the next piece.
Why it's useful
Live, with no button to press
Every figure recalculates as you type, so you edit against the numbers in real time instead of pasting, checking, and pasting again. It makes trimming to a limit or filling out a thin draft a continuous part of writing rather than a separate step.
Reading and speaking time, not just counts
Word count tells you how long the text is; reading and speaking estimates tell you how long it takes to consume. That is what you actually need for scripts, intros, talks and anything with a time budget, where minutes matter more than a raw total.
Nothing leaves your browser
The whole tool runs client-side. Your text is never uploaded or stored, so unpublished drafts, confidential documents and client work stay private while you count and edit them.
What the counts tell you
Word count is a proxy for depth, not a target
Word count is the quickest proxy for depth, but it is not a ranking factor. Google does not reward a page for hitting a number; it rewards the page that answers the query most completely, which sometimes takes four hundred words and sometimes two thousand. Use the count to check you have said enough, not to pad toward a target someone quoted you, because filler added only to reach a length is exactly the kind of writing a reader abandons and a search engine learns to skip.
The honest way to use the figure is to write the piece until the question is answered, then look at the count to sanity-check it. A how-to that resolves in six hundred clear words does not need to become fifteen hundred, and a complex guide should not be cut short to feel tidy. Length should follow the subject. The counter helps you notice when a draft is thinner or heavier than the topic deserves, so you can decide deliberately rather than by habit.
Reading time, speaking time and sentence length
Reading time here assumes about 225 words per minute, the usual average for silent reading of web copy, and speaking time assumes about 130 words per minute for a natural spoken pace. Both are estimates: skimmable copy reads faster, dense technical prose slower, and a confident speaker runs quicker than a careful one. They are most useful for scripts, intros, talks and anything with a time budget, where a two-minute target is far more concrete than a word count.
Average words per sentence is a readability signal worth watching. Long sentences are not wrong, but a whole page averaging thirty-plus words per sentence is tiring to read on a screen, where attention is already stretched. Mixing short and long sentences keeps the rhythm, and the counter makes it easy to spot when every sentence has quietly grown to the same length, which is often what makes otherwise accurate writing feel heavy and hard to get through.
The longest word is a quick clarity check
The longest-word figure is a small but handy flag. A very long word is sometimes a necessary technical term and sometimes jargon that a plainer choice would replace. Glancing at it now and then is a cheap way to catch the moments where the writing has drifted toward the needlessly complicated, especially in copy meant for a broad audience.
Characters, limits and the pixel-width catch
Character count matters most where a hard limit exists: a title tag around sixty characters, a meta description around a hundred and fifty-five, a tweet, an ad headline, a form field. For those, count characters rather than words, because a single long word can blow a limit that a higher word count would clear. The characters-without-spaces figure is handy where spaces are not counted, as in some ad platforms and legacy database fields.
There is one catch worth remembering: search engines truncate titles and descriptions on rendered pixel width, not on character count. A title full of wide capitals is cut sooner than one of narrow letters at the same length, so treat the character figure as a guide and preview the real rendering before you publish. Count to stay in the right range here, then confirm how the snippet actually displays, and you avoid shipping a title that looked fine by the numbers but gets cut in the results.
They use Otorank
Questions
What each count means, how the time estimates are worked out, and when to count characters instead of words.
It splits your text on whitespace and counts the resulting chunks, the same way most word processors do. Punctuation attached to a word does not add to the count, and the figure updates live as you type.
Reading time assumes about 225 words per minute for silent reading, and speaking time about 130 words per minute for a natural pace. Both are estimates and will vary with how skimmable or dense your text is.
There is no single number. Write until the query is fully answered, which can be a few hundred words or a few thousand. Use the count to check the piece is not thinner than the topic deserves, not to hit a target.
Count characters wherever a hard limit applies, such as title tags, meta descriptions, tweets and ad headlines. Remember that search results truncate on pixel width, so preview the real rendering as well.
No. Everything is counted in your browser; nothing is uploaded or stored, so you can check unpublished and confidential writing safely.