Free Online Word Counter

What is a word counter?

A word counter is a tool that tells you how many words are in a piece of text. Word Counter also shows the number of characters, sentences and paragraphs, and estimates how long the text takes to read or say out loud. It helps you check an essay, article, post or script against a length limit in seconds.

How to count words online

1. Type or paste your text into the box at the top of this page, or click Open file to load a document.
2. Read the live totals above the text box: words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and reading time.
3. Check the Details panel for characters without spaces, unique words, average lengths and speaking time.
4. Use Copy, Save .txt or Clear when you are done.

How we count words

A word is any group of characters between spaces that contains at least one letter or number. In practice, that means:

• “well-known” and “don’t” count as one word each.
• Numbers such as 2026 or 3.14 count as words.
• Punctuation on its own, such as a dash or an ellipsis, is not a word.
• Languages written without spaces (Chinese, Japanese, Thai) are split into words using your browser’s built-in language rules.

Sentences end with a period, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis. Common abbreviations such as “Dr.” and “e.g.”, single initials and decimals such as 3.14 do not end a sentence. Paragraphs are blocks of text separated by line breaks; empty lines are ignored. Characters are counted as you see them, so an emoji counts as one character.

Count words in a PDF, Word or Excel file

Click Open file or drag a file onto the text box. Word Counter reads the file inside your browser and places its text in the editor, so you can count it and edit it. Supported formats are PDF, Word (.docx and .doc), Excel (.xlsx and .xls), PowerPoint (.pptx), OpenDocument (.odt, .ods, .odp), TXT, Markdown, CSV, RTF and HTML, up to 20 MB.

• Word documents: the main body text is counted, including tables. Headers, footers, footnotes and comments are not included.
• Spreadsheets: every filled cell on every sheet is counted, so numbers count as words.
• PDFs: only selectable text can be counted. Scanned pages are images and contain no text. Because PDFs store text by position, the count can differ slightly from the original document.

Why word count matters

Many essays, applications and articles have a word limit, and staying within it shows that you can follow instructions and write concisely. Some instructors allow a small margin, so always check your own guidelines. For online writing, length affects how long readers spend on a page, and many platforms limit captions, bios and descriptions by characters instead of words.

How reading and speaking time are estimated

Reading time assumes 200 words per minute, and speaking time assumes 130 words per minute. Real speed varies by person and by how difficult the text is, so treat both as estimates.

Word count	Reading time (200 wpm)	Speaking time (130 wpm)
300 words	1 min 30 sec	about 2 min 18 sec
500 words	2 min 30 sec	about 3 min 51 sec
1,000 words	5 min	about 7 min 42 sec
2,000 words	10 min	about 15 min 23 sec

Words vs. characters

Word count measures length in words. Character count measures every letter, number, space and symbol. Text messages, social posts and search result descriptions are usually limited by characters, while essays and articles are usually limited by words. Word Counter shows both, with and without spaces.