Word & Character Counter at a glance
- What it does
- Count words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and estimated reading time as you type.
- Where it runs
- Entirely in your browser — no data is uploaded
- Works offline
- Yes, once the page has loaded
- Cost
- Free, with no account and no usage limit
- Category
- Text Utilities
How to use the counter
- Type or paste your text. The counts update on every keystroke.
- Read the measure you need - words, characters with spaces, characters without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, reading time.
- Edit in place until you are inside the limit.
Limits worth memorising
| Where | Limit | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Page title tag | 50-60 characters | Google truncates by pixel width, not character count, so capitals and wide letters cost more. |
| Meta description | 150-160 characters | Not a ranking factor, but it is your advert in the results page. |
| X / Twitter post | 280 characters | Links count as a fixed length regardless of the real URL. |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 characters | Truncated after roughly 125 in the feed, so front-load the message. |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 characters | "See more" appears at about 210. |
| SMS | 160 characters | 70 if the message contains any non-GSM character, including most emoji. |
| Google Ads headline | 30 characters | Per headline, three headlines. |
| Blog post for depth | 1,500-2,500 words | Not a rule - length should follow the subject, not a target. |
How reading time is estimated
The standard figure is 200 to 250 words per minute for adult silent reading of general prose, and this tool uses a figure in that range. It is an average across a wide distribution: careful reading of technical material runs at 100 to 150, and skimming for a specific fact can exceed 400.
Speaking is much slower. Presentation pace is around 130 to 150 words per minute, and audiobook narration sits near 150. A five-minute talk is therefore about 700 words, not the 1,100 a reading-speed estimate suggests - a discrepancy that has ruined many conference slots.
Why two tools disagree about the count
There is no single definition of a word. Different tools make different choices, and none of them is wrong.
- Hyphenated compounds. Is "state-of-the-art" one word or four? Microsoft Word says one; a whitespace-splitting counter says one; a hyphen-splitting counter says four.
- Numbers and dates. Some counters exclude standalone numerals.
- Contractions. "don't" is one word by every sensible measure, but a naive tokeniser splitting on apostrophes makes it two.
- Languages without spaces. Chinese and Japanese have no word delimiters, so a whitespace-based count is meaningless. Character count is the useful measure there.
If a hard limit is being enforced by someone else's software, count with their tool. Otherwise a few percent either way is not worth worrying about.
Characters, code points and what a limit really counts
Character limits are less obvious than they look. An emoji such as 👍 is one visible character but two UTF-16 code units, so a field with a 280-character limit implemented in JavaScript charges you two. Family emoji built from several joined characters can cost seven or more. Accented letters may be one code point or two, depending on how they were normalised.
The practical consequence: if a form rejects text that looks short enough, emoji or accented characters are usually the reason.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, live on every keystroke. There is no button to press.
Different tokenisation rules, mostly around hyphens, numbers and how footnotes or headers are treated. Differences of one or two percent are normal.
No. Counting happens in your browser and nothing is transmitted, so unpublished manuscripts and confidential drafts stay private.
As many as the subject needs. Longer posts correlate with better rankings largely because thorough coverage requires more words - padding a thin article to 2,000 words helps nobody. Answer the question completely, then stop.
Both, separately. Publishers and translators often specify "characters without spaces", so the distinction matters when you are being paid by the character.
Nothing you enter here leaves your browser
Word & Character Counter does its work in JavaScript running on your own device. The page loads once, and after that there is no upload step and no server involved — which matters here because unpublished drafts, contracts and internal documents stay on your machine.
You can verify this rather than taking our word for it: load the page, disconnect from the internet, and the tool keeps working. Our privacy policy sets out what is and is not collected, and this guide explains why the distinction matters.