Word Counter
Live analysis · Platform limits · Top words
Average word length0 chars
Longest word—
Lines0
Speaking time0 min
Unique words0
Avg sentence length0 words
Platform Character Limits
X (weighted)
0 / 280
SMS (GSM-7)
0 / 160
LinkedIn Post
0 / 3,000
Instagram
0 / 2,200
Meta description
0 / 160
Page title (SEO)
0 / 60
How to Count Words and Reading Time
A word is any run of characters between spaces, tabs or line breaks, so "well-being" and "don't" each count as one. At an average silent reading speed of 238 words per minute, 1,000 words take about 4 minutes 12 seconds to read. Paste your text above to get words, characters, sentences, reading and speaking time, and your most used words.
The counter runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you paste is uploaded or stored.
Reading and Speaking Time by Word Count
Reading time uses 238 words per minute, the average for silent reading of non-fiction in English. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute, a typical pace for a talk or presentation. The stat boxes above round up to the next whole minute.
| Words | Reading time (238 wpm) | Speaking time (130 wpm) |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 25 s | 46 s |
| 250 | 1 min 3 s | 1 min 55 s |
| 500 | 2 min 6 s | 3 min 51 s |
| 750 | 3 min 9 s | 5 min 46 s |
| 1,000 | 4 min 12 s | 7 min 42 s |
| 1,500 | 6 min 18 s | 11 min 32 s |
| 2,000 | 8 min 24 s | 15 min 23 s |
| 2,500 | 10 min 30 s | 19 min 14 s |
| 5,000 | 21 min 1 s | 38 min 28 s |
Working backwards is often more useful: a 5-minute talk at 130 words per minute is about 650 words, and a 10-minute talk about 1,300. Time yourself reading 300 words aloud and scale from your own pace.
What Counts as a Word, Sentence and Paragraph
Words
Anything between whitespace is one word: numbers (42, 3.14), URLs, hashtags, hyphenated words and contractions all count once. An emoji or a dash with spaces on both sides also counts as a word here. Chinese, Japanese and Thai are written without spaces, so a sentence in those languages counts as a single word; use the character count instead.
Sentences
Each group of . ! or ? marks ends a sentence, so "Wait..." counts once. Abbreviations such as "Dr." or "U.S." add extra sentences, and text with no end punctuation counts as 1 sentence. Average sentence length is words divided by sentences, rounded.
Paragraphs and lines
A paragraph is a block separated by at least one blank line. Lines are the line breaks plus one, so a paragraph that wraps on screen is still one line.
Top words and unique words
For these, punctuation and digits are removed and words are lowercased, so "Word," and "word" are the same. Top words skip common English stopwords (the, and, of and so on) and words under 3 letters.
Common Word Count Mistakes
- Pasting from a PDF. PDFs often break lines in the middle of sentences and join words at column edges, which changes the count. Check a paragraph by eye after pasting.
- Invisible characters. A zero-width space is not whitespace, so two words joined by one count as one. A non-breaking space does separate words.
- Counting footnotes and references. Many essay limits exclude the bibliography. Paste only the part that counts.
- Assuming every tool agrees. Word processors treat dashes, slashes and numbers slightly differently, so small differences between tools are normal. If a limit is strict, use the tool the grader or publisher uses.
Need to hit a character limit rather than a word count? The Character Counter shows bytes and platform limits in more detail.
Method and sources. Reading speed: Brysbaert, M. (2019), "How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate", Journal of Memory and Language, which puts silent reading of English non-fiction at 238 words per minute on average. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute, a common planning pace for talks; your own pace may be anywhere from about 100 to 170. Times in the table are words divided by the rate, rounded to the nearest second. X weighting follows X's open-source twitter-text rules; SMS limits follow 3GPP TS 23.038.
Word Count Guide
The average adult reads 200 to 250 words per minute for non-fiction prose. This counter uses 238 WPM, the average for silent reading of English non-fiction in a 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies by Marc Brysbaert. Skilled readers and those familiar with the subject matter often reach 300+ WPM. The reading time displayed is a rough estimate: actual time varies significantly based on text complexity, subject familiarity, and individual reading speed.
A standard double-spaced academic page (12pt Times New Roman, 1-inch margins) is approximately 250 to 300 words. Single-spaced is about 500 to 600 words per page. Reference counts for common formats: a novel is 80,000 to 100,000 words; a novella 17,500 to 40,000 words; a short story 1,000 to 7,500 words; a blog post 500 to 2,500 words; a tweet 10 to 30 words; a LinkedIn post 150 to 300 words for best engagement. A 5-minute speech at 130 WPM is approximately 650 words.
Twitter/X allows 280 characters per post (expanded from 140 in 2017). URLs count as 23 characters regardless of actual length. Instagram captions allow 2,200 characters but only the first 125 are visible without tapping "more." LinkedIn posts allow 3,000 characters. LinkedIn articles have no practical limit. SMS messages are 160 characters in GSM-7 encoding; messages with non-standard characters (emoji, accented letters) use UCS-2 encoding and are limited to 70 characters per segment. Meta descriptions for SEO should be 150 to 160 characters; page titles 50 to 60 characters to avoid truncation in search results.
This tool counts sentence-ending punctuation: periods, exclamation marks, and question marks. Consecutive punctuation (like "...") counts as one. Abbreviations such as "Dr.", "U.S.A.", "etc." may cause slight overcounting because they contain periods. For very short texts with no sentence-ending punctuation, the count defaults to 1 if any text is present. Academic readability formulas like Flesch-Kincaid define sentences the same way. For a more accurate count in complex texts with many abbreviations, dedicated grammar-checking tools are more reliable.
Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword appears relative to the total word count: (keyword count / total words) × 100. The "Top Words" section above shows the most frequent meaningful words in your text, which approximates your keyword density. For SEO, keyword density guidelines have evolved significantly: search engines now focus on topical relevance and natural language rather than keyword frequency. Keyword stuffing (excessive repetition) is penalized. A natural density of 1 to 3% for primary keywords is generally accepted. Focus on semantic variations and related terms rather than exact-match repetition.
Research from multiple SEO studies suggests different optimal lengths depending on the goal. For ranking in competitive search results: 1,500 to 2,500 words tends to perform well for most topics. Long-form content (3,000 to 4,000+ words) ranks better for highly competitive terms because it provides more comprehensive coverage. However, quality beats length: a concise 800-word post that fully answers the search intent outperforms a padded 3,000-word post. Local business pages and simple informational queries often rank with 300 to 600 words. The right length is whatever it takes to fully answer the user's question.
Reading time uses 238 WPM (average adult silent reading speed). Speaking time uses 130 WPM, which is the average conversational speaking rate for presentations and public speaking. Professional broadcasters and fast speakers reach 150 to 180 WPM. Slow, deliberate speech for formal speeches or teaching is around 100 to 110 WPM. If you are preparing a speech, calculate your actual rate by reading a 500-word sample aloud and timing yourself, then adjust the estimate accordingly.
This counter defines a word as any sequence of non-whitespace characters separated by spaces, tabs, or line breaks. This matches how most word processors (Microsoft Word, Google Docs) count words. Hyphenated words like "well-being" count as one word. Numbers ("42", "3.14") count as words. Contractions ("don't", "it's") count as one word each. URLs count as one word. This matches the industry standard definition. Some academic submission systems count differently: check specific requirements, as there can be a variance of up to 5% between counting methods for the same text.
Average sentence length (ASL) is total words divided by total sentences. Readability formulas like Flesch-Kincaid and Gunning Fog heavily weight sentence length: longer sentences are harder to read. Guidelines by reading level: elementary school: 8 to 10 words per sentence; average adult: 15 to 20 words; academic writing: 20 to 25 words; legal/technical documents: 25+ words (often too complex). Best practices for web content: aim for 15 to 20 words per sentence on average. Vary sentence length for rhythm: a short sentence after two long ones creates emphasis. The most readable writing mixes sentence lengths deliberately.
Unique word count (also called vocabulary richness or type-token ratio when divided by total words) measures lexical diversity. A high ratio suggests varied, rich vocabulary. A low ratio may indicate repetition. Type-token ratio = unique words / total words × 100. In natural speech: around 40 to 60%. In quality writing: 60 to 80%. In very short texts, the ratio is artificially high because every word is likely unique. For academic writing, a vocabulary richness score above 70% is generally considered strong.
About 4 minutes 12 seconds at 238 words per minute, the average silent reading speed for non-fiction. Reading aloud at 130 words per minute takes about 7 minutes 42 seconds. Dense technical text or a second language can easily halve the reading speed.
Only partly. Words are split at spaces, and Chinese and Japanese are written without them, so a whole sentence counts as one word. Korean uses spaces between word groups, so its count is closer to what you expect. For these languages the character count is the more reliable measure, and it is what most publishers and translators use.