Count words, characters and reading time in real time
Our free online word counter gives you an instant, accurate breakdown of any piece of writing the moment you paste or type it. As you work it tallies words, characters with and without spaces, sentences and paragraphs, then estimates how long the text takes to read aloud or silently. Because everything updates live, you can watch your progress against a target as you draft, trim an overlong paragraph, or tighten a caption to fit a strict limit without ever leaving the page.
Writers face word limits everywhere — university essays, journal abstracts, job applications, meta descriptions, tweets and ad copy all come with a ceiling or a sweet spot. Guessing leads to painful last-minute cuts or padding. This tool removes the guesswork by showing exact figures alongside helpful averages such as words per sentence and characters per word, which are gentle indicators of readability and pacing that help you write clearer, more scannable prose.
Everything happens locally in your browser, so your draft never touches a server and is never stored. That privacy matters when the text is a confidential report, an unpublished manuscript, or client work under an NDA. There is nothing to install and no account to create: open the page, paste your text, and get professional-grade statistics on any device, from a phone on the train to a desktop in the office.