Word & Character Counter
Type or paste text and every count updates as you go: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, lines and unique words, plus reading and speaking time. Below the counts you get the most frequent words and phrases, and length checks for an X post, a page title, a meta description and an SMS. The text is counted on this page and never sent anywhere.
Length limits
SMS: empty message.
Search engines cut titles and descriptions by pixel width, not characters, so 60 and 160 are guides. The page title row uses the first line only.
Top keywords
No keywords yet. Phrases of 2 or 3 words are listed once they appear at least twice.
| Keyword | Count | Density |
|---|
How to use
- Type or paste your text into the box. All the counts update as you type.
- Read the totals: words, characters (with and without spaces), sentences, paragraphs, lines, unique words, average word length, and reading and speaking time.
- Check Length limits to see how the text fits an X post (280), a meta description (about 155β160 characters) and a page title (about 60, measured on the first line). The SMS line shows the encoding and how many message segments it needs.
- To check a limit of your own, such as a 500-character form field, enter it under Custom character limit.
- Under Top keywords, choose 1, 2 or 3-word phrases. Untick Ignore common English words to include words such as the, and and of.
- Click Copy stats to copy the totals as plain text.
Examples
9 words, 44 characters, 36 without spaces, 1 sentence.
3 words: the hyphenated word, the contraction and the number each count once.
2 words (δ½ ε₯½ and δΈη) and 4 characters, with Intl.Segmenter.
SMS: UCS-2 because of the emoji; 1 segment of up to 70.
Supported formats
- Words: where your browser supports Intl.Segmenter (all current browsers), words follow the Unicode word-boundary rules. Chinese, Japanese and Thai, which have no spaces, are split with the browser's dictionary, so δ½ ε₯½δΈη is two words. Hyphenated compounds (well-known, state-of-the-art), contractions (don't, l'homme), numbers such as 3.14 and 1,000, and snake_case names count as one word each. Punctuation, symbols and emoji are not words.
- Characters are counted the way you see them (grapheme clusters), so ππ½, π¨βπ©βπ§ and Γ© written as e plus an accent each count as one. Characters without spaces leaves out spaces, tabs and line breaks.
- Sentences come from the Unicode sentence-boundary rules; a line break also ends a sentence. Paragraphs are blocks separated by one or more blank lines. Lines counts every line, blank ones included.
- Reading time uses 238 words per minute and speaking time 150 words per minute, both average figures for English.
- Keyword density = how many times a word or phrase occurs Γ· total words Γ 100. Words are compared without case. Phrases don't run across punctuation such as full stops and commas, and 2- and 3-word phrases are listed only once they occur at least twice.
- X post length follows X's published weighting: most Latin, Greek and Cyrillic characters count 1, CJK characters and most others count 2, each emoji counts 2, and a link starting http://, https:// or www. counts 23.
- SMS uses the GSM 03.38 7-bit alphabet when every character is in it: 160 characters in one message, 153 per part when split; β¬ [ ] { } ^ ~ | and \ use two. Any other character (an emoji, a curly quote, many accented letters) switches the whole message to UCS-2: 70 in one message, 67 per part.
Privacy
This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter or open is sent anywhere. Privacy policy.
Limitations
- Word counts can differ from Microsoft Word or Google Docs by a few words, because each program has its own rules for dashes, slashes, URLs and numbers. For example, a URL here counts as several words.
- If your browser lacks Intl.Segmenter, a simpler fallback is used: each Chinese or Japanese character counts as one word, and abbreviations such as e.g. split into two.
- Sentence detection doesn't know abbreviations, so Dr. Smith is counted as two sentences.
- The stop-word filter is English only. Reading and speaking times are rough for other languages and don't apply to Chinese or Japanese, which are usually measured in characters per minute.
- X counts a bare domain such as example.com as a 23-character link; this tool counts it as typed. The X limit applies to standard accounts.
- Search engines cut titles and descriptions by pixel width, not character count, so the 60 and 155β160 targets are guides. Carriers can also handle SMS differently, for example by replacing characters to stay in GSM-7.
FAQ
Is my text sent anywhere?
No. Counting happens in JavaScript on this page. There is no upload, and the text is not saved, so copy anything you need before you close the tab.
Do hyphenated words count as one word?
Yes. well-known and state-of-the-art each count as one word, as in Microsoft Word. A spaced dash, as in a - b or a β b, separates two words.
Why does one emoji count as one character here but as 2 on X?
The character count shows what you see, so ππ½ is one character even though it is two code points and four UTF-16 units. X uses its own weighting, in which every emoji counts as 2 towards the 280 limit.
Why does one emoji turn my SMS into 70-character parts?
SMS can only use the compact 7-bit GSM alphabet when every character is in it. One emoji, curly quote or unsupported accented letter forces the whole message into UCS-2, which fits 70 characters per message instead of 160. The SMS line lists the characters responsible.
How is reading time calculated?
Words Γ· 238 words per minute, the average silent reading speed for adults reading English non-fiction. Speaking time uses 150 words per minute, a typical presentation pace.