A Free Word Counter That Keeps Up With You
Maybe you are trimming a college essay down to 500 words. Maybe you want to know if a blog post is long enough or a caption will fit on Instagram. Type or paste your text in the box above, and every number updates the moment you change a letter: words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, and how long the piece takes to read or say out loud.
Everything happens inside your own browser. Your text is never uploaded, never stored on a server and never used for anything else. If you leave autosave on, a copy stays only on your device, so a closed tab won't wipe out your draft.
How to Use the Word Counter
- Type straight into the box, or paste text from Word, Google Docs or anywhere else.
- To check a file, tap Open file or simply drag a .txt or .md document onto the box. Want to try it first? Demo fills in sample text.
- Watch the Overview panel. It updates as you write.
- Working toward a target? Enter it under Word Goal. Choose "At least" for a minimum or "At most" for a hard limit, and the bar fills up as you go.
- When you are done, copy the text, download it as a .txt file, or use Copy stats to share a quick summary.
What Each Number Means
- Words: any group of letters or numbers counts as one word. Contractions like "don't" and hyphenated words like "well-known" count once, the way most teachers and editors count. Hindi and other Devanagari text is counted properly too.
- Characters: every letter, number, space and punctuation mark. No spaces leaves the spaces out, which some translation jobs use for pricing.
- Sentences: counted by full stops, question marks, exclamation marks and the Hindi purna viram (।).
- Paragraphs: each block of text that starts on a new line.
- Reading time: based on an average silent reading speed of about 238 words per minute. You can switch to slow or fast in Settings. Speaking time uses around 130 words per minute, a relaxed pace for a speech or a presentation.
- Readability: a Flesch Reading Ease score for English text. Higher means easier to read. A score of 60 to 70 is plain English most adults read easily.
Why Word Count Still Matters
Limits are everywhere. Universities ask for essays and statements of purpose within a set range, and going over can cost you marks. Board exams and competitive exams often expect answers of a fixed length.
Online, length decides how your words appear. Google usually shows around 60 characters of a page title and about 160 characters of a meta description before cutting the rest off with "…". Social platforms have hard caps as well: 280 characters for a post on X and 2,200 for an Instagram caption. The Character Limits panel checks all of these at once, so you can see what fits before you hit publish.
Keyword Density, Without Overdoing It
The keyword density panel lists the words and phrases you use most, along with the share of your text each one takes up. It shows whether your main topic actually appears, and whether one word comes up so often that the writing feels stale.
There is no perfect percentage that guarantees a higher ranking, so write for your reader first. If one phrase towers over everything else, swap in a synonym or rework the sentence. Keep "Ignore common words" switched on to hide fillers like "the", "and" and "is".
Tips for Hitting Your Word Count Naturally
- Running long? Cut filler phrases ("in order to" becomes "to"), drop extra adverbs, and remove sentences that repeat a point you have already made.
- Running short? Add a real example, a short story or a fact instead of padding.
- Giving a talk? Use the speaking time. A five-minute slot works out to roughly 650 words.