Word & Character Counter
See useful text counts update while you type.
How to count words and characters
- Type or paste text into the box.
- Read the live totals below it—there is no submit button.
- Use “Without spaces” when a platform ignores whitespace in its limit.
How the counts work
- Words
- The browser's language-aware word segmenter identifies word-like parts, so punctuation is not counted as a word.
- Characters
- User-perceived characters are counted. A joined family emoji or a letter plus a combining accent counts as one character.
- Reading time
- The estimate uses 200 words per minute and rounds a non-empty result up to at least one minute.
Check a draft against a character limit
Enter an optional target below the live totals when a form, profile, advert or social post has a maximum length. The progress bar uses the same user-perceived character count shown above it. It tells you how many characters remain—or how far the draft is over—without cutting or rewriting your text.
A target is only a writing aid. The destination app has the final say: some services count line breaks, emoji, links or composed characters differently. Before publishing an important message, paste the final version into that service and check its own counter.
Useful counting workflows
- Prepare a form response
- Paste the draft, set the stated character limit, then edit until the remaining count is non-negative. Keep the meaning clear instead of removing spaces merely to reach a number.
- Review an article or lesson
- Use words and paragraphs to spot unusually dense sections. Reading minutes are a broad planning estimate, not a promise about every reader.
- Check a copied list
- Lines reveal the number of physical rows, including blank rows. If duplicates or excess whitespace distort the structure, clean the text with the related tools before relying on the totals.
- Compare two versions
- Count each version separately after saving the first elsewhere. This counter does not store drafts or calculate a diff, which keeps the workspace simple and private.
Characters, code units and bytes are different
This tool treats a visible grapheme—such as a joined family emoji or a letter combined with an accent—as one character. Some older systems count the underlying UTF-16 code units instead, and storage or API limits may count UTF-8 bytes. Those totals can diverge for emoji and many non-ASCII scripts, so confirm which measurement a technical specification requires.
What the counter does not judge
A shorter draft is not automatically clearer, and a longer draft is not automatically more complete. The counter does not score grammar, originality, keyword use or quality. It also does not upload the text for analysis. Use the numbers to answer a specific constraint, then review the writing in context.
Limits and privacy
The input is limited to 250,000 characters to keep updates responsive. Everything is counted in this browser and is not uploaded or saved. Different editors can define words and characters differently, especially for scripts without spaces.
Common questions
Do spaces count as characters?
The main character total includes spaces and line breaks. The separate “Without spaces” total excludes all whitespace.
Why can another app show a different word count?
Word boundaries vary by language and implementation. This tool uses the browser's international text segmentation when available.
Does an emoji count as one character?
Usually yes here, even when the emoji is assembled from several Unicode code points. Another platform may use a different counting rule, so its displayed limit can still differ.
Are blank lines included?
Each line break creates another line. Paragraphs are groups of non-empty text separated by one or more blank lines, so a run of blank lines does not create several empty paragraphs.
Is my text sent to a server?
No. Counting and the optional limit calculation run in this browser. The tool does not save the text or include it in the page address.