Word Counter & Character Counter
Paste your text to count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs instantly.
How the counts work
Words are groups of letters or numbers separated by spaces, which suits English and Bahasa Malaysia. Chinese, Japanese and Korean text does not use spaces between words, so those characters are counted separately instead of being forced into the word count. Characters include spaces and punctuation, and a second figure shows the count without spaces.
Reading time assumes about 200 words per minute for normal reading, and a similar pace for Chinese characters. It is a rough guide only, since reading speed depends on the person and the text.
Word and character counts are handy for school assignments, social media captions, SMS messages, product descriptions and website titles. As a rough guide, Instagram captions are limited to 2,200 characters, and a standard SMS segment holds 160 characters. Search engines usually show only the first 150 to 160 characters of a page description.
Everything is counted in your browser. The text you type is not uploaded or saved.
Frequently asked questions
Does this tool save my text?
No. The counting happens in your browser and nothing is sent to a server.
How are words counted?
Words are separated by spaces or line breaks. Hyphenated words and numbers count as one word each.
Does it count Chinese characters?
Yes. Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters are shown in their own count because those languages do not separate words with spaces.
Why are my character counts different from Microsoft Word?
Small differences can come from how line breaks, emoji and special characters are counted. This tool counts each visible character, including emoji, as one.
How long should my text be?
It depends on the purpose. Check the limit given by your teacher, platform or client, then use the live count while you write.