Word Counter & Character Counter
Paste or type your text to see live counts of words, characters, sentences and paragraphs, plus how long it takes to read or read aloud at an average pace.
Words
0
Characters
0
Characters (no spaces)
0
Sentences
0
Paragraphs
0
Reading time
< 1 sec
Speaking time
< 1 sec
Reading time assumes about 200 words a minute; speaking time assumes about 130 words a minute — both vary a lot by reader, speaker and content. Everything here is counted in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
What's being counted
Words are counted as runs of non-space characters, so "well-known" and "don't" each count as one word, matching how most word processors count. Characters are counted both including and excluding spaces, since many limits (tweet length, meta descriptions, text message segments) care about one or the other specifically.
Sentences are estimated by counting runs of text ending in a period, question mark or exclamation point, and paragraphs by counting blocks of text separated by a blank line. Both are approximations: an abbreviation like "Dr." or a decimal like "3.14" can occasionally be miscounted as a sentence break.
Reading and speaking time
Reading time is estimated at about 200 words per minute, a commonly cited average adult silent-reading speed, though it varies widely by text difficulty and individual reader — technical or unfamiliar material reads slower, easy prose reads faster. Speaking time uses about 130 words per minute, closer to a typical spoken presentation pace, which is why the same text takes noticeably longer to say aloud than to read silently.
These estimates are useful for pacing a speech, checking whether a blog post matches a target read time, or gauging how long a script will run — not as an exact measurement for any specific speaker or reader.
Frequently asked questions
- How is a word counted?
- As any run of characters separated by whitespace, so hyphenated words and contractions each count as a single word.
- Why don't my sentence and paragraph counts look exactly right?
- Sentence counting looks for periods, question marks and exclamation points, so abbreviations or decimal numbers can occasionally be counted as sentence breaks. Paragraphs are counted as blocks of text separated by a blank line.
- How many words is a 5-minute speech?
- At the speaking-time estimate of about 130 words a minute used here, roughly 650 words. Your own pace may be faster or slower.
- Is my text uploaded anywhere?
- No. Everything is counted directly in your browser as you type; nothing is sent to a server or stored.