What Is a Word Counter?
A word counter tells you how many words your text contains. Paste an essay, an article, a cover letter, or a social post, and the total updates live as you type. Alongside the word count you also get characters, characters without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, and an estimated reading time.
Everything runs in your browser. Your text is never uploaded, so you can safely paste drafts and private writing.
How to Count Words
Type or paste your text into the box above. The counter treats every run of characters separated by a space, tab, or line break as one word. Numbers and hyphenated words (like state-of-the-art) each count as a single word.
Use Try sample text to see it working, Copy result to grab the numbers, and Clear to start over.
Why Word Count Matters
Essays and Assignments
Most academic work sets a word limit — "1,500 words, plus or minus 10%". Going too far under or over can cost marks, so a live count as you write keeps you on target without pasting into a word processor.
Articles and SEO
Content that ranks well tends to cover a topic thoroughly. Many writers aim for a target length for a given piece; the word count here lets you check at a glance and the reading-time figure helps you judge whether a post is skimmable.
Job Applications
Cover letters and personal statements often have tight limits. Keeping a one-page cover letter near 250–400 words reads far better than an overlong wall of text.
Reading Time
The reading time stat estimates how long your text takes to read at about 200 words per minute — useful for newsletters, scripts, and "x min read" labels on posts.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the word counter count words?
Every run of non-space characters counts as one word, so words separated by spaces, tabs, or line breaks are all included. Numbers and hyphenated words each count once.
How is reading time calculated?
It assumes an average adult reading speed of about 200 words per minute — your word count divided by 200.
What is the difference between characters and characters without spaces?
Characters counts everything including spaces and line breaks. Characters without spaces excludes all whitespace, which is what some forms and limits measure.
Is my text uploaded anywhere?
No. All counting happens inside your own browser — nothing is sent to a server and we never see your text.
Need a different kind of count?
Try the character counter for tweet and SMS limits, the sentence counter for readability, or the online counter to count anything by hand.