Word and character counter
Count words, characters, sentences, and reading time as you type.
Runs locally in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
How the counts work
Type or paste in the box. The counts update as you type. A word is a stretch of text separated by whitespace, which is how a document counter treats “it’s” and “state-of-the-art” as single words. Characters are Unicode code points, so a single emoji counts as one character here. Some form fields instead count UTF-16 code units, and an emoji can take two of those. If you are up against a hard maxlength in an old form, leave a little room.
Characters without spaces drop every whitespace code point and keep the rest, including punctuation. Sentences are split on periods, question marks, and exclamation marks, and a piece counts only when it still contains a letter or a number. “Dr.” will look like a sentence break. That is a simple split, not a grammar parser, and it is good enough for a draft. Paragraphs are blocks separated by a blank line. A single newline does not start a new paragraph. Lines follow the newline characters you actually typed.
Reading time divides the word count by 230. That is the same pace this site uses when it estimates how long a post takes to read. It is a planning number, not a measurement of you. A page of code or a page of names will not match it.
Length limits that show up in publishing
The bars under the box compare the character count with limits people bump into: about 60 characters for a search title, about 160 for a meta description, 280 for an X post, 300 for Bluesky, and 3000 for a LinkedIn post. These are the usual published ceilings, not a live reading of each product’s current counter. X in particular weights some characters and counts some links in its own way. Use the bar to see that you are in range, then check the product if the post is close to the edge.
For a meta description, write the sentence first and look at the character line, not the word line. Search snippets are cut by width, and width follows characters. The regex tester is the next stop when you want to strip markup or pull a title out of a larger blob before you count it.
Common questions
Does it count words inside HTML tags?
Yes, if the tags are in the box. The counter does not parse HTML. Paste the visible sentence when you want the words a reader sees. Paste the raw source when you want the length of the source.
Why is the character count different from my phone?
Products disagree about emoji, newlines, and links. This page counts code points and counts a newline as a character. A social app may collapse a link to a fixed length. The figure here is the length of the text you pasted.
Can I count several drafts?
Replace the text. Nothing is saved between visits, which also means a draft you meant to keep should live in your own notes. The page is a counter, not a document editor.
What is a good meta description length?
Aim for a complete sentence under about 160 characters. Shorter is fine when the sentence is done. Stuffing keywords past the point where the sentence reads well does not help the snippet.