A word counter tells you how long a piece of writing is: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, and roughly how long it takes to read aloud. Type or paste below and every count updates as you go.
Counts as you type. Nothing leaves your browser.
- Words
- 25
- Characters
- 131
- Without spaces
- 105
- Sentences
- 3
- Paragraphs
- 2
- Reading time
- 7 sec
- Speaking time
- 10 sec
Character limits
- Page title (SEO)131 / 60 · 71 over
- YouTube title131 / 100 · 31 over
- Meta description131 / 160 · 29 left
- X post131 / 280 · 149 left
- Instagram caption131 / 2,200 · 2,069 left
- LinkedIn post131 / 3,000 · 2,869 left
Top keywords
- cats3× · 12.0%
- sleep1× · 4.0%
- twelve1× · 4.0%
- sixteen1× · 4.0%
- hours1× · 4.0%
- day1× · 4.0%
- rest1× · 4.0%
- time1× · 4.0%
- eat1× · 4.0%
- groom1× · 4.0%
The limit bars show how the text measures up against the fields people most often write to a length for, and the keyword list shows which words you lean on, with common words such as "the" and "and" left out.
What each count means
| Count | What it counts | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Words | Runs of letters or digits, with contractions and hyphenated words counted once | Essay and article word limits |
| Characters | Everything you can see or type, spaces and line breaks included, emoji counted once | X posts, meta descriptions, form fields |
| Without spaces | The same, minus spaces, tabs and line breaks | Letter counts, some translation quotes |
| Sentences | Text ending in ., ! or ?, or at the end of a line | Checking sentence length |
| Paragraphs | Lines with something on them | Structure at a glance |
| Reading time | Words at 238 a minute | Blog posts and newsletters |
| Speaking time | Words at 150 a minute | Talks, videos and voice-overs |
Character limits
| Field | Limit | How strict |
|---|---|---|
| Page title (SEO) | 60 | A guide: search engines cut titles by pixel width, around 600 px |
| YouTube title | 100 | Hard limit |
| Meta description | 160 | A guide: longer ones are cut, usually around 920 px on desktop |
| X post | 280 | Hard limit, but CJK characters and emoji count twice and links count as 23 |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 | Hard limit, though only about the first 125 show before "more" |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 | Hard limit, with about the first 210 shown before "see more" |
Exactly at the limit is fine. The bar turns red and says how many characters to cut only once you are over.
Why counts differ between tools
Paste the same text into three counters and you can get three answers. The differences come from a few decisions, and this is what this tool does with each.
- Emoji. Many counters use a string's length in code units, where
👍🏽is 4 and a family emoji is 8. This one counts graphemes, what a reader sees as one character, so each of those is 1. - Accented letters.
écan be typed as one character or aseplus a combining accent. Both count as 1 here. - Languages without spaces. Splitting on spaces makes a Chinese or Japanese paragraph one word. The browser's word segmenter breaks it into real words.
- Hyphens.
co-opis one word here, as in Word and Google Docs. Some counters make it two. - Line breaks. A line break is a character, and
\r\nfrom Windows counts as one, not two. - Sentences. Every counter guesses. Abbreviations such as "Dr." can end a sentence early, so treat the sentence count as an estimate.
Related tools
- Case Converter rewrites the same text in Title Case, Sentence case, camelCase and the rest.
- Regex cheat sheet: when a count is not enough and you want to find or replace a pattern in the text.
- Base64 Encoder and Decoder, for text that has to travel through a URL or a JSON field.
Common questions
How does this word counter decide what counts as a word?
It uses the browser's built-in Unicode word segmentation rather than splitting on spaces. Repeated spaces and blank lines never create empty words, contractions such as don't count once, and hyphenated words such as state-of-the-art count once, the same as Word and Google Docs. Numbers count as words. Emoji and punctuation do not.
Can it count words in Chinese, Japanese or Thai?
Yes. Those languages do not put spaces between words, so a counter that splits on spaces sees a whole sentence as one word. This one uses the dictionary-based word breaking built into your browser, which finds three words in 我喜欢猫. Different browsers ship slightly different dictionaries, so a long passage can differ by a word or two between them.
Does an emoji count as one character?
Yes. The character counter counts what you see as one character, which is what Unicode calls a grapheme. A thumbs-up with a skin tone, a flag or a family emoji is one character here, even though it is stored as up to eight code units and many simple counters report 2, 4 or 8 for it. An accented letter counts once however it was typed.
Is this the same as a letter counter?
Close. The characters without spaces figure counts every letter, digit, punctuation mark and emoji, which is what most people mean by a letter count. The characters figure also includes spaces and line breaks, which is what character limits on X, meta descriptions and form fields count.
How is reading and speaking time worked out?
Reading time assumes 238 words a minute, the average for silent reading of non-fiction in a 2019 review of 190 studies. Speaking time assumes 150 words a minute, a comfortable pace for a talk or a voice-over. Both round up to the next second, so a single word reads as 1 sec rather than 0.
Why does X say my post is a different length?
X weights characters. Most Latin letters count as one, but Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters and emoji count as two, and every link counts as 23 whatever its real length. For English text without links or emoji the counts match; otherwise use the limit bar as a guide and let the X composer have the final word.
Is anything I paste here sent to a server?
No. The counting runs in your browser and the text box is not submitted anywhere, so it is safe for drafts you have not published. The site records that the tool was used and how many characters, words and paragraphs went in, so we know which tools are worth building next. The text and its keywords are never part of that.