Word Counter

A word counter is an online tool that counts the number of words in any block of text and reports related statistics: characters (with and without spaces), lines, sentences, paragraphs, and estimated reading time. It is the go-to tool for writers, students, content creators, and marketers who work with text where length matters.

Word counts matter in many contexts. Blog posts have target ranges for SEO (1,500–2,500 words for in-depth guides). Social media captions are limited (LinkedIn 3,000 chars, Instagram 2,200 chars). Academic essays come with strict word limits. Meta descriptions, ad copy, app store descriptions, and email subject lines all have recommended lengths. A word counter gives you exactly the numbers you need.

This tool counts words by splitting on whitespace — spaces, tabs, and newlines — and treating consecutive whitespace as a single separator. Punctuation like apostrophes ("don't") and abbreviations ("e.g.") are counted as part of the word they belong to. Reading time is estimated at 200 words per minute, the average for adult readers of English. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

For character-level counts (including limits like Twitter's 280), use the [Character Counter](/tools/character-counter/). For line-based counting, see the [Line Counter](/tools/line-counter/). To clean up text before counting, try the [Whitespace Cleaner](/tools/whitespace-cleaner/).