Free text tool

Word Counter – How Many Words Is This?

Paste or type any text to see the word count instantly, plus characters, sentences, paragraphs and estimated reading time. The counting happens locally in your browser.

Your text

Paste text to count the words

The totals update automatically. Nothing needs to be submitted.

How it works

Count the text you already have

A word counter is useful when a form, assignment, article or message has a length limit and you need a quick answer without uploading the text somewhere else.

1

Paste or type

Add the text you want to measure. Counts update with every change.

2

Check the useful totals

See words, characters, characters without spaces, sentences and paragraphs in one place.

3

Estimate the time

Reading time uses about 200 words per minute and speaking time about 130 words per minute.

Word count rules

What counts as a word?

LetterToolkit counts sequences of letters or numbers as words and keeps common apostrophes and hyphens inside a word. Multiple spaces, tabs and line breaks do not create extra words. Different editors can use slightly different rules, so a formal submission system may differ by a small amount for unusual punctuation.

How many words is this text?

Paste it into the box above. The large total on the right is the current word count.

Does this count letters too?

Yes. The character totals show the full character count and a second count with whitespace removed.

What is the difference between words and characters?

A word is a sequence such as toolkit. Characters count each letter, number, punctuation mark and, in the total-character figure, spaces too.

Is the text saved or uploaded?

The counter runs in your browser. LetterToolkit does not need to send the text to a word-count service to calculate these totals.

More LetterToolkit tools

Need to work with the words after counting them?