Word Counter

Count words and characters quickly.

How it works

Count words and characters quickly.

FAQ

This tool is free for core use.

When should you use this?

Use this when you need to check whether a text's word count meets a required limit, for an assignment, an article, or a social media post.

When shouldn't you use this?

Don't pad the text with meaningless repetition or filler sentences just to hit a word count target; a reader or a teacher will notice, content quality matters more than the number.

Step-by-step

Paste or type your text into the text box on the page. There's no separate button; the counts follow what's in the box.
Read the total from the 'Words' counter.
Check 'Characters' if you're writing for a field with a character limit, such as a form description or a product title.
Look at 'Sentences'. Dividing words by sentences gives you the average sentence length, a quick readability check.

Example

A scholarship application asks for a personal statement of no more than 500 words. You paste your draft and it comes to 620, so 120 words have to go. If it has 20 sentences, the average sentence runs 31 words, which is long. Splitting the longest sentences tends to make the text both shorter and easier to read. Paste it again after each round of edits to see how close you are.

How are the three counters worked out?

The word count is the number of pieces you get by splitting the text at spaces, tabs and line breaks after leading and trailing spaces are removed; an empty box shows 0. The character count includes every character in the box: letters, digits, punctuation, spaces and line breaks. The sentence count is the number of groups of full stops, question marks and exclamation marks; consecutive marks (“...”, “?!”) count as one group. Example: “Hello world. How are you? Very well!” gives 7 words, 36 characters and 3 sentences. “Wait... what?!” is 2 words, 14 characters and 2 sentences. The numbers update as you type or paste.

When reading the results

The tool does not count paragraphs; it shows only words, characters and sentences.
Because splitting happens only at spaces, a hyphenated word such as “well-known” counts as one word.
A decimal point also counts as a sentence end: “Version 3.5 is out.” shows 4 words, 19 characters and 2 sentences.
A text with no punctuation marks shows 0 sentences.
Line breaks are included in the character count; if a limit is counted without spaces you have to subtract them yourself.

Things to keep in mind

Tools don't all count words the same way. Hyphenated words, numbers like 3.5 or abbreviations like etc. can count as one word in one tool and two in another. If the limit is official, the submission system's own counter is the one that counts.
Abbreviations with periods, like Dr. or e.g., can inflate the sentence count.
Check whether a character limit includes spaces. The two figures can be quite different.
Text copied from Word or a PDF may bring along headings, footnotes and page numbers. Paste only the part that should be counted.

Related ready-made prompts: Editing, Summary & Translation Prompts.

Frequently asked questions

Is my text saved?

No, the text you enter is never sent to a server; it's processed entirely in your browser.

Does it work with very long texts?

Yes, though performance may degrade with very large texts (hundreds of thousands of characters).

Is it free?

Yes, it's completely free.