Word Counter
Count words, characters, sentences, and reading time as you type.
The word counter
Type or paste your text and the counter shows words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, lines, reading time (238 words per minute) and speaking time (130 words per minute) while you write. Under the editor, live bars measure the same text against an X post (280 weighted units), a meta description (about 155 characters), a title tag (about 60), an SMS (160 characters, or 70 once an emoji or another character outside the GSM-7 alphabet forces UCS-2), a LinkedIn post (3,000) and an Instagram caption (2,200), plus a word or character target of your own.
About the word counter
The WordBench word counter gives you a live, honest count of everything in your text the moment you type or paste it. Words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, reading time, and speaking time all update in real time, with no button to press and nothing sent to a server.
Counting words sounds simple until you actually need it to be right. A word is any run of non-whitespace characters, so hyphenated terms and contractions count the way a human would read them. Characters are counted twice, once including spaces and once without, because different limits care about different things. A tweet cares about every character; an essay word count usually does not.
Everything runs client side. Your draft is never uploaded, which matters when the text is a cover letter, a private journal entry, or an unpublished manuscript. It is kept in this browser's own storage as you type, so a refresh or a closed tab does not cost you the draft, and Clear deletes that copy at once, with one step of Undo in case it was a mis-click.
How do you use the word counter?
Type or paste into the editor, or open or drop a .txt file on it. Press / from anywhere on the page to jump into the editor, and Esc to leave it again. The counts sit beside the editor on a computer and in a strip above it on a phone, so they stay in view while you write.
To work towards a length, enter a target under Limits and pick words or characters. The bar shows how far along you are, and the target is kept in the page address, for example ?goal=500&unit=words, so a link opens the counter with the same target. Your text never goes into that link.
To fix the text itself, the buttons under the editor change it in one step: UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case, Sentence case and Capitalize Each Word, or remove extra spaces, line breaks and empty lines. Undo, or Ctrl+Z straight after, takes the last change back. Copy text and Copy stats put the result or a summary of the counts on your clipboard.
Who uses it
Worked example
Paste a short paragraph such as: "Acme Robotics shipped its first home assistant this spring. Early reviews from Globex testers were warm, if a little cautious."
WordBench reports 22 words, 129 characters, 108 characters without spaces, 2 sentences, and roughly a 6 second read. The keyword panel surfaces the meaningful terms and skips filler words like the and its, so the density figures reflect what the text is actually about.
Frequently asked questions
How is reading time calculated? Reading time assumes an average silent reading speed of 238 words per minute, a figure drawn from published reading research for adult readers of general prose. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute, closer to a comfortable presentation pace. Both are estimates and scale linearly with your word count.
How is reading time calculated?
Reading time assumes an average silent reading speed of 238 words per minute, a figure drawn from published reading research for adult readers of general prose. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute, closer to a comfortable presentation pace. Both are estimates and scale linearly with your word count.
What counts as a word?
A word is any unbroken run of non-whitespace characters. So can't is one word, state-of-the-art is one word, and a stray emoji surrounded by spaces counts as one. This matches how a reader would tally the text out loud.
What is keyword density and why does it matter?
Keyword density is how often a term appears as a percentage of total words. It is a rough signal for SEO and readability. Very high density on a single term can read as keyword stuffing, while a natural spread of related terms usually reads better to both people and search engines.
Is my text stored or uploaded anywhere?
It is never uploaded. The counter runs entirely in your browser, and nothing is sent to a server or logged. So that a refresh does not lose your draft, it is saved in this browser's local storage on your own device, where only this site in this browser can read it. Clear deletes it immediately, and clearing your browser data removes it too.
Can I set a word count target?
Yes. Enter a number under Limits and choose words or characters, and a bar tracks your progress, including how far over you are. The target is added to the page address, so a teacher or editor can share a link that opens the counter with the same target already set. Only the number and the unit go into the link, never your text.
Which character limits does it check?
An X post (280, counted with X's weighting, where an emoji costs 2 and every link 23), an SMS (160 characters in GSM-7, 70 in UCS-2, and how many messages a longer text is split into), a LinkedIn post (3,000), an Instagram caption (2,200), and the usual rules of thumb for a meta description (about 155) and a title tag (about 60). Google publishes no hard limit for those last two, so they are shown as a guide rather than a rule.
Does it count characters with or without spaces?
Both, side by side. Character limits on some platforms include spaces and some do not, so WordBench always shows you the two numbers together.
Exactly what this tool counts, and why the result can differ from your word processor, is written out on the methodology page. Platform character limits, with the unit each one counts in and the date it was checked, are on the character limits pages.
Related tools
Use this page when the constraint is a word count. Need character limits instead, for a bio, an ad headline or an SMS? Use the character counter, which measures in each platform's own unit. Want the full ranked table of which words a draft leans on, rather than the top few? Use the word frequency counter.