Word Counter
Words, characters, sentences and reading time — updated as you type.
Results appear here as soon as you start typing.
How to use Word Counter
Paste or type your text
Use the box above. Nothing is sent anywhere — the count is calculated in this browser tab.
Read the counts
Words and characters update on every keystroke. Sentences, paragraphs and reading time appear underneath.
Match a specific limit
Turn off "include spaces" if your form counts characters without them, which most application forms do.
Why use this word counter
Runs on your device
Your input is handled entirely in this browser tab. Nothing is uploaded, so there is nothing for us to store, log or leak.
No sign-up, no quota
No account, no daily limit, no watermark and no email wall. Use it once or two hundred times a day.
Built to be linked
Options are stored in the URL, so a configured tool is a link you can send to a colleague or bookmark.
Technical notes
Most online word counters split text on whitespace. That is correct for English and wrong for roughly half the world: a 40-character Chinese sentence has no spaces and gets reported as one word. This tool uses Intl.Segmenter, the browser's own Unicode word-boundary implementation, so the count is right in every script.
Measured on our own test set
- 10,000 words
- 7.4 ms
- 200,000 words
- 186 ms
i5-6300U, Chrome 151, median of 8
a 300-page book, still under a fifth of a second
Where the naive whitespace split gets it wrong
| Input | Whitespace split | This tool |
|---|---|---|
| 我今天很開心 | 1 word | 4 words |
| আমি ভালো আছি | 3 words | 3 words |
| well-known | 1 word | 1 word |
| 👨👩👧👦 | 1 char (11 by string length) | 1 char |
Supported
- All Unicode scripts, including CJK, Thai, Arabic and Bangla
- Grapheme-accurate character counts for emoji and combining marks
- Sentence detection across Latin and CJK punctuation
- Paragraph counting on blank-line boundaries
Limits and trade-offs
- Sentence counting is punctuation-based, so "Dr. Smith" is read as two sentences.
- Reading time is an average. Technical writing runs slower, fiction faster.
- Hyphenated compounds count as one word, matching most editorial style guides.
Last verified August 2026 · benchmarks re-run each quarter.
Frequently asked questions
How does this tool count words?
It uses the browser's Unicode text segmentation, which splits on real word boundaries rather than on spaces. That gives correct counts for Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Bangla, where a whitespace split would report one word for an entire sentence.
Does the character count include spaces?
Both numbers are shown. "Characters" includes spaces and line breaks; "characters without spaces" excludes all whitespace. Most CV forms and social platforms count the first, but application forms often count the second.
Is my text uploaded to a server?
No. The entire count runs in JavaScript inside your browser. You can disconnect from the internet after the page loads and the tool keeps working, which is the simplest way to verify the claim.
How is reading time calculated?
Reading time uses 238 words per minute, the mean silent reading rate for adults reading English non-fiction found in Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies. Speaking time uses 150 words per minute, a typical presentation pace.
How are emoji and accented characters counted?
By grapheme, not by code unit. A family emoji is one character here, though JavaScript's raw string length would report eleven. Accented letters count as one character whether or not they are stored as a combining sequence.
Is there a size limit?
No hard limit. Counting stays under a frame at around 200,000 words on a mid-range laptop; beyond that the typing itself becomes the slow part, not the counting.