How to Count Words and Characters Online (Free)

To count words and characters, paste or type your text into the free Word Counter and read the totals that update as you type. You get words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, lines, reading time, and speaking time, plus the words you repeat most. There's nothing to install and no sign-up, and your text never leaves your browser.

How to count words and characters, step by step

1. Open the Word Counter.
2. Click the box labeled Your text and type, or paste your draft with Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac).
3. Read the stat cards at the top: Words, Characters, Characters (no spaces), Sentences, Paragraphs, Reading time, Speaking time, and Lines.
4. Scroll to Top keywords to see your most frequent words and their density.
5. Click Clear to empty the box and start over.

Counts update as you type, so you can trim a paragraph and watch the number drop without pressing a button.

Worked example

Paste this sentence into the tool:

Toolstik is fast. It runs in your browser!

You'll see 8 words, 42 characters, 35 characters without spaces, and 2 sentences. The gap of 7 between the two character counts is the 7 spaces.

For longer pieces, reading time is simply words divided by 238. A 1,000-word article shows 4 min 12 sec reading time and 7 min 9 sec speaking time (at 140 words per minute). That speaking estimate is useful when you're writing a talk, podcast intro, or video script.

What each count means

The Top keywords list shows up to 10 words. It ignores words shorter than three letters and common filler words such as "the", "and", and "with", then shows each word's count and its share of your total words. If one term takes up an unusually large share, you're probably repeating it more than you need to.

Tips for hitting word and character limits

• Check which count the limit uses. Essay and application forms usually limit words. Ad platforms, meta descriptions, and bios usually limit characters. Some forms count spaces and some don't, so check both character figures.
• Cut filler first. Words like "really", "very", and "in order to" are easy to remove without changing your meaning.
• Use speaking time for scripts. If you have a two-minute slot, aim for a speaking time a little under two minutes so you have room to pause.
• Write search snippets separately. For page titles and meta descriptions, the Meta Title & Description Checker gives length guidance and a search preview. Our guide on how to write a meta title and description explains the limits.
• Fix casing in one pass. If a heading came out in all caps, run it through the Case & Slug Converter instead of retyping it.

Common mistakes

• Counting the wrong text. If you paste a whole page, headings, captions, and footnotes are included. Paste only the section the limit applies to.
• Assuming every tool matches exactly. Word processors handle edge cases like URLs, dashes, and numbers slightly differently. A difference of a word or two between tools is normal.
• Trusting the sentence count for abbreviations. "Dr. Smith arrived." counts as two sentences, because the period after "Dr" looks like the end of a sentence.

Troubleshooting

The paragraph count is 1 but I have several paragraphs. Paragraphs need a blank line between them. Text copied from some apps uses single line breaks, which count as new lines but not new paragraphs. Add blank lines if you need an accurate paragraph count.

A URL counts as several words. Something like https://toolstik.com counts as two words ("https" and "toolstik.com") because the colon and slashes split it.

Emoji or flags add more than one character. Characters are counted per Unicode code point. A flag emoji is made of two code points, so it adds 2.

Chinese, Japanese, or Thai text shows very few words. These languages don't put spaces between words, so the counter sees long runs of characters. Use the character count instead.

Alternatives

• Google Docs: open Tools > Word count (or press Ctrl+Shift+C, Cmd+Shift+C on a Mac). You can also turn on a live word count while typing.
• Microsoft Word: the word count appears in the status bar at the bottom of the window. Click it to see characters with and without spaces.
• Toolstik: handy when you're working in a browser form, CMS, or email and don't want to open a document. It also shows reading time and top keywords.

Privacy

The Word Counter runs entirely in your browser. Your text isn't uploaded, logged, or saved, so it's fine for unpublished drafts, client work, and personal writing.

Once your copy is the right length, turn the headline into a clean URL with our guide on how to create an SEO-friendly URL slug, or browse every writing and search tool in free SEO and text tools.