Word Counter
Words, characters, sentences, reading time and density.
About Word Counter
Count words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and pages for a Word document or pasted text. Includes estimated reading and speaking time plus a keyword density table.
Word counts decide things: whether an essay meets a brief, whether an abstract fits a limit, roughly how long a translation will cost. It is worth counting the same way the person checking will.
Paste text or open a document, and see the breakdown rather than a single number.
- Processed on your deviceEverything you open or type here is handled by this page and never uploaded anywhere.
- No queue, no limitsNothing waits on a server, so the only limit is your own hardware.
- No account neededNo sign-up and no email address required.
How Word Counter works in your browser
Counting runs on the text in this page. Words are separated on whitespace after the text is normalised, which matches how word processors count and is why the number here should agree with the one Word shows you.
Characters are reported both with and without spaces, because different limits mean different things — social platforms and database fields usually count everything, while academic limits often do not. Sentences are detected on terminal punctuation followed by a break, and paragraphs on blank lines.
For a .docx, Mammoth extracts the document’s visible text first and the same counting applies. Headers, footers and footnotes sit outside the main text flow and are not included, which is also how most institutions define the count.
When to use it
Checking an essay or dissertation chapter against a strict limit before submission. Trimming an abstract, a bio or a covering letter to a maximum length. Estimating translation or copywriting cost, which is normally quoted per word. Counting a confidential draft — an unpublished manuscript or an internal report — without pasting it into someone else’s website.
Read more about this
Frequently asked questions
Does the count match Word's own?
Very closely for ordinary prose. Small differences can appear around hyphenated words, numbers and text inside tables, where different tools apply slightly different rules.
How is reading time estimated?
From the word count at typical silent reading and speaking rates. It is a planning figure for a talk or an article, not a precise measurement.
What is the keyword density table for?
It shows which words recur most, which is useful for checking whether a piece leans too heavily on one phrase before publishing.