Word Counter — Characters, Reading Time & Readability
A live text analyser for writers, SEOs and students. Counts words, characters (with & without spaces), sentences, paragraphs, lines, unique words and syllables. Estimates reading / speaking / writing time and computes Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG, ARI and Coleman-Liau scores. Includes keyword density, 2-gram / 3-gram analysis, and live limit bars for Twitter, meta description, title tag and SMS. 100% client-side.
All the ways you can use this word counter
Every metric writers, editors, SEOs and students actually ask for — live, accurate, private.
Unicode-aware tokeniser — handles contractions, hyphenated compounds and numbers correctly.
Exact total length, including every space and line break. What Twitter, SMS and meta tags actually measure.
Ignores all whitespace — useful for translations, price-per-character freelance work, and typography studies.
Counts every terminal . ! ?, skipping abbreviations like Mr., e.g., Ph.D.
A paragraph is any run of non-empty lines separated by blank lines.
Every hard line break including the ones you can't see.
Vocabulary size — a rough signal of repetition and lexical variety.
Approximate syllables — the input to most readability formulas.
Estimated silent-reading time at 238 wpm (research-backed average).
Presentation-pace estimate at 150 wpm — plan podcasts, voiceovers and talks.
Drafting estimate at 40 wpm — realistic plan for first drafts.
0–100 scale; 60+ is plain English, 30- is academic.
US school-grade level required to understand the text.
Years of education needed; great for business and finance writing.
Healthcare-industry standard for patient-facing material.
Automated Readability Index — character-based grade level.
Grade level computed from characters per word and sentence — no syllable counting.
Top words by share of total — stop-words filtered out by default.
Spot over-used phrases and natural long-tail keyword candidates.
Live progress bar with warning and over-limit colours.
Stay within Google's snippet cutoff.
Avoid pixel-width truncation in search results.
7-bit GSM + Unicode segment awareness.
Plan professional posts with room to spare.
Spot typos, jargon spikes, and children's-book opportunities.
Classic editing signals — shorter usually reads better.
UPPER, lower, Title, Sentence, iNVERT — one click each.
Trim ends, collapse double-spaces, strip line breaks — preview before you paste.
Load a full draft straight from your drive.
No uploads, no signup, no tracking — safe for client work and unpublished drafts.
Why word count and readability matter
A good word counter does more than count words — it tells you whether your writing will actually be read. Two paragraphs of the same length can require radically different effort from the reader, and that effort is what readability formulas measure.
Every algorithm here boils down to the same two inputs: how long the sentences are, and how complex the words are. Short sentences + short words = easy; long sentences + many-syllable words = hard. Different formulas weight those inputs differently, which is why looking at several at once is more reliable than trusting one number.
Length also has hard limits. Meta descriptions are truncated by Google around 160 characters. SEO titles are cut at ~60. Tweets max out at 280. SMS segments are 160 characters (or 70 with Unicode). Overshoot and your message literally doesn't make it to the reader — the progress bars in the editor keep you honest.
The six readability formulas, explained
206.835 − 1.015 × (words/sentences) − 84.6 × (syllables/words).0.39 × (words/sentences) + 11.8 × (syllables/words) − 15.59.0.4 × ((words/sentences) + 100 × (complex words / words)).1.0430 × √(polysyllables × 30/sentences) + 3.1291.4.71 × (chars/words) + 0.5 × (words/sentences) − 21.43.0.0588 × L − 0.296 × S − 15.8 (where L = letters per 100 words, S = sentences per 100 words).Who this word counter is for
Frequently asked questions
How does the counter define a word?
Any run of Unicode letters or digits separated by whitespace or punctuation. Contractions count as one word; hyphenated compounds count as the number of letter runs; numbers and mixed tokens like COVID-19 count as one.
How is reading / speaking time calculated?
Reading time uses 238 wpm (Brysbaert 2019 adult silent-reading average). Speaking time uses 150 wpm (clear presentation pace). Writing time uses 40 wpm. Divide the word count by each rate, round up to the nearest minute.
What Flesch Reading Ease score should I aim for?
60–70 for general web and blog content, 70+ for marketing and email, 50–60 for long-form editorial. Below 30 is "very difficult"; most readers will bounce.
What are the character limits for SEO, Twitter and SMS?
Google truncates meta descriptions around 155–160 characters and titles around 60. Twitter / X allows 280. SMS = 160 (GSM-7) or 70 (Unicode). LinkedIn posts = 3,000. The live progress bars cover all of these.
Does this tool upload my text?
No. All counts, readability scores, and keyword analysis happen locally in your browser. Nothing is sent to any server.
What is keyword density?
The percentage of total words taken up by a specific term. 0.5–2% for your focus keyword is a reasonable sanity check; above 3% typically reads as stuffing.
Can I use it for non-English text?
Yes for any language that separates words with whitespace — Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and accented European scripts are all supported. Readability formulas are English-calibrated, so use them cautiously elsewhere.
Why does Microsoft Word give a slightly different word count?
Word counters differ in how they handle hyphens, numbers, URLs, and punctuation-only tokens. Expect 1–3% variation between tools on long documents. This counter documents its tokenizer exactly so the numbers are reproducible.