A word counter reports how long a piece of text actually is — words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and estimated reading time — updating live as you type. It is built for essay limits, social post limits, and SEO fields where the character budget is fixed and unforgiving.
What is counted
Every statistic updates on each keystroke, with no button to press.
- Words — sequences the Unicode segmentation rules recognise as word-like.
- Characters, with and without spaces — for hard limits such as meta descriptions.
- Sentences and paragraphs — for pacing and readability.
- Reading time at 225 words per minute, and speaking time at 150.
- The most frequent meaningful words, with common filler words excluded.
Common length limits
Useful targets when you are writing to fit a field:
- Page title: about 60 characters before search results truncate it.
- Meta description: about 155 characters.
- Bluesky post: 300 characters. Mastodon: 500 by default.
- LinkedIn post: 3,000 characters, though the first 210 are what people see.
Why character counts differ between tools
Counting is less obvious than it looks. An emoji such as a family or a flag is a single visible character, but is stored as several code units — so a naive count reports it as two, four or more.
This counter uses grapheme segmentation, meaning it counts what you see rather than what is stored. That matches how platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon enforce limits, though some older systems still count code units and will disagree.
FAQ
Is my text saved or uploaded?
No. Counting happens entirely in your browser as you type. The text is never transmitted, logged or stored, so drafts and confidential documents are safe to paste in.
How is reading time calculated?
Word count divided by 225 words per minute, an average adult silent reading speed for general prose. Technical material is read more slowly, so treat the figure as a rough guide.
Do hyphenated words count as one word or two?
A hyphenated compound such as "state-of-the-art" is counted as separate word-like segments, which matches most word processors. Contractions such as "don't" count as one.
Why does my emoji count as one character here but two elsewhere?
This tool counts graphemes — what a reader perceives as one character. Tools that count UTF-16 code units report most emoji as two, and some composite emoji as many more.