Paste or type your text. Words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, and reading time — counted live.
Your Text
Words
0
Characters
0
No Spaces
0
Reading Time
< 1 min read
Sentences
0
Paragraphs
0
Lines
0
Unique Words
0
Top Keywords
(excludes common stop words)
Type some text to see keyword frequency...
Why Use an Online Word Counter?
Whether you are drafting a blog post, writing an essay, crafting a tweet, or preparing a report, knowing your word and character count is essential. Blog platforms like Medium and WordPress have built-in counters, but they disappear when you switch editors or paste into a different tool. This free online word counter works instantly, directly in your browser — no login, no account, no extensions needed. Just paste your text and every stat updates in real time.
The reading time estimate uses the widely accepted average reading speed of 200 words per minute for English text. If your article comes out at 1,000 words, readers will spend about 5 minutes with it — a sweet spot for SEO blog posts that perform well on Google. For Chinese content, the tool uses 400 characters per minute, reflecting the faster parsing speed of Chinese readers with logographic text. Knowing your reading time helps you structure content with confidence before you publish.
Frequently Asked Questions
How are words counted?
Words are counted by splitting text on whitespace — any sequence of non-whitespace characters is counted as one word. This means hyphenated words like well-known count as a single word, and contractions like don't count as one word. Numbers, URLs, and punctuation-adjacent text all count as individual words if separated by spaces. For Chinese text, CJK characters are counted individually and English words embedded in Chinese text are counted separately as word tokens.
Is my text stored anywhere?
No. All processing happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your text is never sent to any server, never stored in a database, and never logged. This tool is a static HTML file — there is no backend, no API calls, and no data collection of any kind. You can safely paste confidential drafts, private notes, or sensitive documents. Refreshing the page clears everything.
What's the ideal word count for SEO blog posts?
For standard blog articles targeting competitive keywords, 1,500–2,500 words is the sweet spot — long enough to cover a topic thoroughly, short enough to keep bounce rates low. For pillar pages and comprehensive guides, 3,000+ words is common among top-ranking pages. News articles and product pages can perform well at 500–800 words. The key is that every word should add value; Google's algorithms have become adept at detecting padding. Use this tool to check your draft length before publishing, and aim for reading times between 7–12 minutes for long-form content.
Twitter / X character limit — how does this help?
Twitter / X has a 280-character limit per post (or 25,000 for X Premium subscribers). Paste your draft tweet into this tool and check the Characters stat — that number should stay at or below 280 for a standard post. The "No Spaces" character count is also useful for platforms like LinkedIn, which counts characters slightly differently for certain Unicode characters. Instagram captions allow up to 2,200 characters, and TikTok descriptions up to 2,200 as well. Knowing the exact character count before you post prevents last-minute truncation surprises.
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