Word Counter

What Is the Word Counter?

It counts the words in your text as you type, along with characters, sentences and paragraphs. It also estimates how long the text takes to read silently and to read aloud, which helps when you are writing a speech, a video script or a blog post with a target length.

When You Need a Word Count

• Essays, assignments and applications with a word limit.
• Articles and blog posts briefed at a certain length.
• Speeches and presentations - the speaking time tells you whether it fits your slot.
• Product descriptions and ads, where shorter is usually better.

How to Use It

1. Type or paste your text into the box.
2. Read the counts - they update with every keystroke.
3. Use Clear to start again.

Example

This two-paragraph note:

Byteary started as a weekend project. Today it has hundreds of free tools.
Every tool runs in your browser, so your text never leaves your device. That keeps things fast - and private.

has 32 words, 185 characters (152 without spaces), 4 sentences and 2 paragraphs. It uses 30 different words, takes about 8 seconds to read and about 15 seconds to say out loud.

How Words Are Counted

A word is a run of letters or digits. Contractions such as don't and hyphenated words such as well-known count as one word, a lone dash counts as none, and numbers such as 2026 count as words. Hindi, Arabic and other scripts that separate words with spaces are counted the same way. Reading time assumes 238 words a minute, a widely cited average for adults reading English non-fiction; speaking time assumes 130 words a minute, a comfortable presentation pace.

Limitations

Word processors such as Microsoft Word and Google Docs use slightly different rules for dashes, symbols and numbers, so on a long document your total may differ by a few words. Chinese, Japanese and Thai do not put spaces between words, so word counts for those languages are not meaningful; use the Character Counter instead. To see which words you repeat most, try the Keyword Density Checker.