Paste or type any text and this tool tallies it instantly — words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, and an estimated reading time. It updates live as you edit, so you can trim to fit a limit without guessing.
How the counts are worked out
Each metric answers a slightly different question:
- Characters is the raw length of your text, spaces and line breaks included — this is the number that matters for hard limits like a tweet or an SMS.
- Characters (no spaces) strips whitespace, which some platforms and forms count instead.
- Words are runs of non-space characters, so "don't" and "state-of-the-art" each count as one word, matching how word processors count.
- Sentences are counted by sentence-ending punctuation (
. ! ?), and paragraphs by blank-line breaks.
- Reading time assumes an average adult silent reading speed of about 200–250 words per minute.
When and why you'd use it
- Staying under a limit — X/Twitter posts (280 characters), SMS (160), or a form field with a maximum.
- SEO writing — page titles read best around 60 characters and meta descriptions around 150–160, where search engines truncate them.
- Essays and assignments — hitting a word count without pasting into a full word processor.
- Estimating effort — how long a page will take an audience to read.
Worked examples
Text: The quick brown fox. → 4 words, 20 characters, 16 without spaces, 1 sentence.
A 160-character meta description shows as 160 characters — right at the point Google usually cuts descriptions off, so you can tighten it.
A 500-word article reports a reading time of about 2 minutes (500 ÷ ~250 wpm).
Frequently asked questions
Do spaces count as characters?
In the "Characters" total, yes — spaces and line breaks are included, because that's what platforms with character limits count. The separate "Characters (no spaces)" figure excludes them for cases that don't.
How is a "word" defined?
Any run of characters separated by spaces or line breaks. Hyphenated terms and contractions count as a single word, which matches how Word and Google Docs tally.
Where does the reading time come from?
It divides the word count by an average silent reading speed (~200–250 words per minute). It's an estimate — technical text reads slower, familiar text faster.
Is my text saved or sent anywhere?
No. All counting happens in your browser as you type. Nothing is uploaded, logged, or stored — close the tab and it's gone.
Counts are heuristic. Sentence and paragraph detection relies on punctuation and blank lines, so unusual formatting (lists, abbreviations like "e.g.", or missing punctuation) can nudge those two figures. Word and character counts are exact.