Paste any text below. Word count, character count, readability, and platform character limits update live as you type. Everything runs on your device. Nothing gets sent anywhere.
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A word counter is a simple online tool that helps you avoid exceeding word or character limits. You paste in text, and it returns to you counts of words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs, as well as an estimate of how long it will take to read. Writers have used word counters since the days of high-word-count school essays. The same limits on word length now apply to most online communication, and so a word counter for 280-character Twitter messages or a 40-character Meta ad headline is useful for keeping within legal limits.
This advanced Word Counter goes beyond simple word and character counting. It will grade the readability of your copy, estimate how long it will take to read, and specify limits for all major social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, SMS, and Meta ads. The counter runs in your browser, so everything is deleted from the computer you used to enter it.
Here is what each of those numbers tells you.
Words. Words are any separated mass of whitespace (including spaces between words and even paragraphs). Note that even hyphenated words (e.g. "Well-" in "Well-known" or "Word-" in "Word counter" above) are considered separate words and are counted individually in much the same way as they are in Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Numbers are also considered words. Thus "2026" is a word of length 4.
Characters with spaces. This figure includes every space in addition to every letter and forms the basis for calculating most character limits (including Twitter, SMS, and most Meta ads).
Characters without spaces. This is similar to the total number of characters with spaces, except it doesn't include spaces. You might be surprised to learn that translators can charge per character, excluding spaces. Some of the ad specs we track also use this metric.
Sentences. This measures the number of sentences you have included. A high number of sentences which are similar in length to each other can often make your work appear to be written by a robot. The best writing is that which contains a variety of very short sentences and some very long ones.
Paragraphs. This counts blank lines between blocks of text. If you're writing a long page for the web, then try to use short paragraphs to create more of a rhythm. On the other hand, long paragraphs are generally something to avoid as they create large blocks of text that people don't read online.
Unique words = total number of words / number of unique words. This ratio can give you an idea of how repetitive your writing is. Often such writing is found in technical writing where the same terms are used over and over again. In most cases, however, it is better to write with more variety.
Average words per sentence. This measures the average length of a sentence, and for most readers, 15 to 20 words is best. Academic writing is longer than this, and blog posts are generally shorter. If your sentences are longer than 25 words, then try to cut the longest sentence in half.
Estimated pages (double-spaced, 12pt, standard margins): Based on 250 words per page. Can be used as an estimate for planning purposes only.
Reading time. This is calculated using the average silent reading speed for adults (250 words per minute), so you know how long your content will take to read. You can use this to add a line to the top of your blog post such as "5-minute read".
Speaking time. 130 words per minute. How long would it take to read your text as a spoken lecture? Use this to better gauge your written content for planning purposes, like rehearsing a talk or script.
We calculate and report two of the most commonly used Readability Scores for any given block of text.
Flesch Reading Ease: The Flesch Reading Ease test scores words between 0 and 100, where higher numbers are easier to read.
The following is a list of general scoring categories:
90-100 = Very Easy to Read (5th Grade). Simple children's books, clear instructions, and easy-to-follow guidelines.
70-80 = Fairly Easy to Read (5th-6th Grade). General audiences can easily follow content written at this level.
60-70 = Standard (7th-9th Grade). Most newspapers and many blogs are written at this level.
50-60 = Fairly Difficult to Read (10th-12th Grade). While not exactly easy reading for the average adult, content written at this level is still usually easy for readers to understand.
Below 50 = Difficult to Read (12th Grade and above). More complex academic papers and legal documents are typically written at this level. Below 30 = Very Difficult to Read (College graduate and above). Very specialized content is usually written at this level.
The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level measures the number of years of education that the average person needs in order to read your work.
Typically, bestselling books are written at a Grade Level ranging from 6th to 8th grade, while most marketing copy is written at a Grade Level below 6th grade. Much of the academic work is written at a Grade Level of 14 or above.
This score simply attempts to measure the degree of accessibility of your writing. For example, Hemingway wrote at a Grade Level of 4, whereas most legal contracts are written at a Grade Level of 18.
Remember, Readability Scores are only a guide, and a high Flesch Reading Ease score does not necessarily mean your work is good. In some cases, readers will need higher grade level work, for example, technical or highly detailed information.
Each social platform has its own character limit. See how many words you are using in real time against each platform in the social panel above.
Twitter / X: 280 characters including spaces, punctuation, and line breaks.
For Instagram captions, we check for 2,200 characters total, but the first 125 characters will appear as the teaser text (before the "more" link). Often you will want to front-load the most important part of your copy.
LinkedIn posts allow 3,000 characters for standard posts (by far the longest of the platforms listed).
Meta ad headlines: 40 characters. A constraint of paid advertising that is tougher than it looks. This will get checked out automatically when you attempt to submit copy for ads in Ads Manager, so use this to test out your headline beforehand.
YouTube descriptions are limited to 5,000 characters, but the first 100-150 characters (or 2-3 sentences) of the description determines whether or not people will click on your video based on the search results listing.
For SMS, the limit per segment is 160 characters for GSM. If you go over this, it will split into multiple segments and often be charged per segment by your carrier, so for SMS marketing it's best to stick under 160 characters.
Note the bar next to each platform, which indicates how close to the character limit you are: Amber at 80% and Red at 100%+.
These are a few things to keep in mind when viewing this report.
Word count data is only useful if you write for the reader, not for the number, so use these metrics as a guide, not a goal. While word count does affect how readers behave online, it is a useless measure for writers unless you use it to ensure that you have written enough to answer the question posed by your article.
A 1,500-word article that answers the question is far better than a 2,500-word article that fails to answer it amid all that verbiage.
Adding the reading time at the beginning of your article or post is a clever way to inform readers of the content's length and discourage unnecessary drop-offs. Round off to the nearest minute.
Longer sentences can be a problem in terms of reader fatigue. This means that an average of over 25 words per sentence requires close scrutiny. Be prepared to break up the longer sentences that contain only one idea.
On a word count level, also use the Keyword Frequency as a kind of Plausibility Check. If your headline word shows up only once in your 1500 words, then you probably wrote another article instead of this one. And if it shows up 40 times, you probably wrote sales copy that's too optimized, in the worst way. A frequency of around 1-2% for your main topic word is usually fine.
This table shows you what your real text is about. (Sometimes you are even surprised yourself.)
Check for character count limitations when you post and publicize on social media. If you publish the Meta ad headline last (and you publish from within the Ads Manager), that text will be resized to fit within 40 characters, potentially to less than half the length of your original work, within a couple of minutes.
Our word count tool runs right in your browser as JavaScript. Therefore, nothing is communicated to any server. All processing occurs locally. Your text is destroyed when you close the browser window. There are no log files or databases.
I'm using the Flesch and Flesch-Kincaid methods for readability, both of which require average sentence length and average syllables per word. I estimate syllables by counting vowel groups and then making a few adjustments for silent letters.
These scores are meant as rough guidance, so give the tool a try and see what it tells you. They're not lab-tested or definitive in any way.
No JavaScript programs or plugins are installed on your device, just your regular browser. Our word counter tool counts up the words as you type, including spaces and any other non-whitespace characters, in real time as you type or paste in text. The rest of the character and sentence counts follow from the words. No button to press for this tool, and no server round trip to wait for. Results update instantaneously as you type.
Note that we define words to follow the conventions of MS Word, Google Docs, and other common word processors. Thus, 'Well-known' is a single word, 'Word counter' is two words, and '2026' is one word of four numbers and the 4-digit year.
For Reading Time, we use 250 wpm (words per minute) for silent reading by adults, and 130 wpm for Speaking Time, roughly the pace of a clearly delivered podcast or keynote presentation. Remember these are averages. A fast reader will finish sooner than this; a slow reader will take longer. These are for planning purposes only.
The Flesch Reading Ease score is reported on a 0-100 scale. The two variables that are used to calculate the score are the average number of words per sentence and the average number of syllables per word. Scores in the 60s and above are considered to be Standard, with reader ease similar to that found in newspapers and general web pages. Scores in the 80s are considered Easy and are typically used for FAQs and other short pieces of copy for landing pages. Scores below 50 are generally considered Difficult and are used for highly academic and legal writing.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level measures the US school grade level that an 8-18 year old student can read and comprehend a text with about average reading ability. Thus, Grade 8 is the 8th grader, Grade 12 is high school senior age, and Grade 16 or higher college graduate. Novels written by bestselling authors are generally at a 6th to 8th grade level, while the majority of marketing copy is written at a 6th grade reading level or lower.
Word frequency is counted on the words remaining in your text after having removed all the punctuation. Around 50 words are removed as stop words (as in the, a, and, in, is, it, etc.). The 10 words with the highest frequency are then ranked in a table showing you what your text is actually about.
All the calculations for our free online word counter and readability tests take place on your computer. The data is never sent to Wordineer servers or to any other third party. We have no idea what you have pasted into the free online word counter. There are no logs or databases of the work you have entered. They are deleted from your computer when you close your browser.
Yes, it works well on small screens. On these, the four statistic panels will re-flow to fit two columns wide, and the social limits panel will stack up vertically. Paste in text from any other application using your mobile device's clipboard, and the word counts and statistics will update each time you paste in more text. It works in the most popular mobile browsers such as Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android, as well as every other modern mobile browser.