Word & Character Counter
Paste your text and instantly see word count, character count, sentence and paragraph counts, estimated reading time, and the most frequently used words. Useful for essays, articles, social media posts, anything with a limit.
How to use
- Just paste or type your text in the box.
- Everything updates live as you type - no button to click.
- Hit Clear to wipe it and start over.
- Scroll down to see your top keywords - common words like 'the' and 'and' are filtered out.
Related tools:
Our word counter tool gives you an instant, real-time count of words, characters (with and without spaces), sentences, paragraphs, and lines as you type or paste text. It also estimates reading time based on the average adult reading speed of 200–250 words per minute, and shows keyword frequency to help with SEO content writing.
Word count matters in many contexts: academic essays often have strict limits (500, 1000, 2000 words), social media platforms cap post length, and SEO best practices recommend blog posts of 1,500–2,500 words for better rankings. This tool works entirely in your browser, so your text is never uploaded or stored.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is reading time calculated?
Reading time is estimated at 200 words per minute, which is the average adult reading speed. A 1,000-word article takes approximately 5 minutes to read. For technical content, the actual time may be longer.
Does the word counter count hyphenated words as one or two?
Hyphenated words like 'well-being' are counted as one word, as most style guides treat them as a single unit. If you need to count them as two, replace hyphens with spaces before counting.
What is the ideal word count for a blog post?
For SEO, long-form content (1,500–2,500 words) tends to rank better as it covers topics in depth. However, quality matters more than length. For social media: Twitter/X is 280 characters, LinkedIn posts perform best at 150–300 words, Instagram captions at under 125 characters.
Does character count include spaces?
Our tool shows both: characters with spaces (total keystrokes) and characters without spaces (actual letter/number count). Most character limits on platforms like Twitter count spaces as characters.