Word counter

Count words, characters, sentences, and reading time — live as you type.

Paste or type your text below

0 words

0 characters

0 chars (no spaces)

0 sentences

0 min read

Character limits worth knowing

Most people reach for a word counter because something has a limit. These are the limits that come up most often, current as of 2026. Paste your text above and read the characters chip against this table.

Where	Limit	Counts as
Google title tag	~60 characters	Pixel width, not characters — 60 is the safe approximation
Google meta description	~160 characters	Truncated around 920px on desktop
X / Twitter post	280 characters	Links always count as 23
Instagram caption	2,200 characters	Only the first 125 show before “more”
Instagram bio	150 characters	Includes spaces and emoji
LinkedIn post	3,000 characters	Truncated at ~210 in the feed
YouTube title	100 characters	Around 70 display in search
Email subject line	~60 characters	Mobile clients often cut at 35
SMS (single message)	160 characters	70 if any non-GSM character is present

One caveat that trips people up: emoji and accented characters are a single character visually but can occupy two or more bytes. Platforms that count bytes rather than characters will see a longer string than this counter reports.

How reading time is estimated

The reading time above assumes 200 words per minute, the widely cited average for an adult reading general prose on a screen. It is a reasonable default, but reading speed varies enormously with material, so treat the number as a planning aid rather than a measurement.

Material	Typical speed	1,000 words takes
Light web article	230–250 wpm	about 4 minutes
General prose (default)	200 wpm	5 minutes
Technical documentation	120–150 wpm	7–8 minutes
Dense academic text	80–120 wpm	8–12 minutes
Read aloud / narration	130–150 wpm	about 7 minutes

If you are timing a talk or a voiceover, use the read-aloud row rather than the default. Speakers consistently overrun because they plan against silent reading speed, which is roughly 40 percent faster than comfortable speech.

Typical length targets by format

Useful when you are writing to a brief rather than to a hard limit.

Format	Typical range
Blog post that ranks in search	1,200–2,000 words
News or update post	300–600 words
Product description	150–300 words
University essay	1,500–3,000 words
Cover letter	250–400 words
Conference talk (20 minutes)	2,400–3,000 words
Executive summary	under 500 words

Exactly how each metric is counted

Different counters disagree, which is why the same document can produce three different numbers. Here is precisely what this one does, so you can reconcile it with Word or Google Docs.

Metric	Method
Words	Text is trimmed, then split on any run of whitespace. A hyphenated compound counts as one word; an em-dash between spaces does not.
Characters	Every character including spaces, tabs and line breaks.
Characters (no spaces)	All whitespace removed, including newlines.
Sentences	Split on periods, question marks and exclamation marks. Abbreviations such as “e.g.” will inflate this count slightly.
Reading time	Words divided by 200, rounded up to the next whole minute.

Microsoft Word counts words the same way for ordinary prose, so the two usually agree within a few words. Google Docs excludes text inside headers, footers and footnotes from its total, which is the most common source of a mismatch.

Privacy

Everything above runs in your browser. The text you paste is held in memory on your own device, is never transmitted, and disappears when you close the tab — which makes this safe for unpublished drafts, client work, legal text and anything else you would not paste into a server-side tool.

Frequently asked questions

Why does my word count differ from Microsoft Word?

For ordinary prose the two agree closely, because both split on whitespace. Differences usually come from text in headers, footers, footnotes, text boxes or comments, which Word may include or exclude depending on your settings.

Does the counter update as I type?

Yes. Every metric recalculates on each keystroke — there is no button to press and nothing to submit.

How are hyphenated words counted?

As one word. "State-of-the-art" is a single word here, which matches Microsoft Word and Google Docs.

Do numbers count as words?

Yes. Any whitespace-separated token counts, so "2026" and "$1,200" each count as one word.

Why is my sentence count too high?

Sentences are detected from periods, question marks and exclamation marks. Abbreviations like "Dr.", "e.g." and decimal numbers each add a false sentence break. Treat the count as an estimate.

Is there a limit on how much text I can paste?

There is no imposed limit. Very large documents — hundreds of thousands of words — may briefly slow the browser, since counting runs on every keystroke.

Is my text uploaded anywhere?

No. The tool is entirely client-side. Nothing is sent to a server, stored, or logged.

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