Count words, characters and reading time — privately
Paste anything and see the counts update as you type: words, unique words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and how long it takes to read aloud. Everything is measured in your browser (0 uploads, works offline), so a client's draft, a legal notice or an unpublished essay never leaves your device.
How to use it
- Paste or type your text into the box — or press Try an example to see it working.
- The Counts panel updates live: words, unique words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and lines.
- The Time to read panel estimates reading time at 200 words per minute and speaking time at 130.
- If the text is over a platform limit, an extra panel says which one and by how much.
- Copy the summary or Download it as a text file when you need to report the numbers.
FAQ
How do I count words in text online for free?
Paste your text into the box on this page — the count appears immediately, calculated by JavaScript running in your browser with no upload and no sign-up. Words are counted as runs of non-whitespace, so "well-known" and "₹1,200" each count as one word, matching how a writer counts rather than how a tokenizer does.
Does this match the word count in Microsoft Word or Google Docs?
Almost always, because the rule is the same: a word is a stretch of characters between spaces. Small differences show up with unusual punctuation — some editors split hyphenated compounds, and some count a standalone symbol as a word. Where they disagree, this page's rule is the one stated above, so you can predict it.
Is my text uploaded or stored anywhere?
No. The counting happens locally and nothing is transmitted, logged or saved — which is the point when the text is a contract, a case note or a draft under embargo. Turn off your Wi-Fi and the page keeps working; that is the simplest way to verify the claim yourself.
Why do characters and "UTF-16 units" differ?
Because people and platforms count differently. An emoji like 🙏 is one character to a reader but two UTF-16 units to X, SMS and most social platforms. This page shows both, so a caption that looks comfortably short but keeps getting rejected finally makes sense.
How is reading time calculated?
Reading time uses 200 words per minute and speaking time uses 130, both rounded to whole minutes with a one-minute floor. These are conventional averages for adult reading of general prose — treat them as a planning estimate for a talk or a newsletter, not a measurement of any particular reader.
Does it handle Hindi and other Indian languages?
Yes. Characters are counted by Unicode code point, so Devanagari, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada text counts correctly, and sentences ending in the danda (।) are recognised alongside full stops.
Limits
There is no length cap beyond what your browser's memory allows, and very long documents stay responsive because the counting is a single pass. Reading and speaking times are averages, not measurements. Sentence counting follows punctuation, so a text written without full stops counts as one sentence.
Related
For a per-platform breakdown of where your text fits, the character limit checker shows every limit at once; the case converter and remove line breaks tools handle the cleanup that usually follows a paste from a PDF.
Bookmark this page (Ctrl+D, or ⌘D on Mac) or install the app — it works offline the next time you need it.