About this tool
Word limits turn up everywhere: a statement of purpose capped at 500, a product description that has to fit, an assignment with a range. Counting by eye does not work past a paragraph, and the word count buried in a document editor is several taps away on a phone. Paste the text here and you have the number.
Words are split on whitespace, which is the right rule for English and for Hindi written in Devanagari, and the wrong rule for scripts that do not put spaces between words. That is worth knowing before you rely on it: Chinese or Thai text will come back as one word, not because the tool failed but because there is nothing in the text to split on. Characters are counted as Unicode code points, which is usually — not always — what a form’s character limit means.
The reading time is a rough figure at 200 words a minute, rounded up, useful mainly for deciding whether something is a two-minute read or a ten-minute one. All of it happens inside your browser, so a long document does not need uploading and nothing you paste ends up anywhere else.
How to use this tool
- Paste or type your text. The box is ten rows tall and takes as much as you want to put in it — a caption, an essay, or a whole chapter.
- Run the count. The counting happens on your device. Nothing is sent anywhere, so it works with the connection off.
- Read the numbers. Word count, estimated reading time, and total characters, plus a note about how the counting was done.
What this tool does not do
- It cannot open a file. Paste the text in.
- There is no word-frequency list, no keyword density, no readability score and no spell check.
- Whitespace splitting is wrong for Chinese, Japanese, Thai and other scripts written without spaces between words.
- Reading time is an estimate from one fixed speed. It is not adjustable.
Common questions
What counts as a word?
Anything separated by whitespace. “well-known” is one word because there is no space in it; “well - known” is three, because there are two. Numbers count too, so “15 August 1947” is three words.
Does it work for Hindi?
Yes. Devanagari puts spaces between words the same way English does, so the count is just as reliable. Where it breaks down is scripts written without word spaces — Chinese, Japanese and Thai text will be reported as one enormous word.
How is the reading time worked out?
Words divided by 200, rounded up, with a floor of one minute for any text at all. Two hundred words a minute is a reasonable pace for ordinary prose read on a screen; anything technical or in an unfamiliar script takes longer.
Is my text uploaded?
No. It stays in the page. There is no request to a server, no draft saved anywhere, and closing the tab is all the deleting you need to do.
Why is the character count different from the one on my form?
This counts Unicode code points. Some forms count bytes and some count what looks like one letter on screen, and Devanagari in particular can produce three different answers. If you are working to a strict limit, trust the form's own counter and use this to get close.