Word limits are everywhere: the 500 words an essay is allowed, the 150 characters in a bio, the 60 in a title tag. Paste your text into the box above and the numbers update as you type, so you can trim until it fits.
What the counter shows
Words. The number of words in your text. A word here means a run of letters or numbers, with apostrophes and hyphens kept inside it, so “don’t” and “well-known” each count as one. This matches how most word processors count, though there are small differences between programs, especially with hyphens and symbols.
Characters. The total number of characters, including spaces and line breaks. Emoji and accented letters are counted as single characters rather than as several bytes.
No spaces. Characters with all whitespace removed. Some forms, translation jobs and platforms quote their limits this way.
Sentences and paragraphs. Sentences are counted by terminal punctuation: full stops, question marks and exclamation marks. Paragraphs are blocks of text separated by a blank line.
Lines. The number of line breaks plus one, which is useful for lists and code.
Unique words and average word length. A quick indicator of how varied and how dense your writing is. Very short average word length tends to mean plain language. Very long averages often mean technical or academic prose.
Reading and speaking time. Estimated from word count, at 200 words per minute for silent reading and 130 for speaking aloud. If you’re writing a presentation or a video script, the speaking time is the one that matters.
The keyword table
Below the numbers, the counter lists your ten most-used words with how many times each appears and what share of the text it makes up. By default it ignores very common words, such as “the”, “and” and “of”, so the list shows the words that carry meaning. Untick that option if you want to see everything.
This is a useful editing check. If you notice that one word dominates a short piece, you may be repeating yourself and can reach for a synonym. If you’re writing for search, it shows you at a glance whether your main topic word actually appears as often as you intended. Don’t take that to extremes. Writing for people matters more than hitting a particular density, and stuffing a keyword in again and again makes text harder to read.
Common limits worth knowing
Different places set different limits, and it’s easy to lose track. As a rough guide, these are typical lengths people aim for, not rules:
- A tweet-style post: a few hundred characters at most.
- A meta description for a web page: roughly 150 to 160 characters.
- A page title for search results: around 60 characters.
- A short-form blog post: 600 to 1,000 words.
- A long, in-depth article: 1,500 words or more.
- A college essay or personal statement: usually between 250 and 650 words, depending on the prompt.
Always check the exact limit on the platform or the assignment brief, since rules change and each platform counts characters its own way. Several count emoji and links differently from plain letters.
Tips for using the counter
Paste in just the part you want counted. If you copy from a web page, you may pick up headings or captions you don’t want. If you’re working to a limit, count after your final edit, since formatting and pasted text can shift the total.
Your text may contain stray line breaks if it was copied from a PDF. The remove line breaks tool fixes that before you count. If a list contains repeated items, clear them with remove duplicate lines. To adjust capitalisation in a headline, try the case converter.
For more on how long things should be and why, see our guide: how many words should you write.
Other counts and checks
A word count is one view of a text. The character counter gives exact character, byte and letter figures, the reading time calculator turns words into minutes, and the readability checker scores how hard the text is to read. For repeated words, use the word frequency counter and the keyword density checker, and to see whether a draft fits a platform limit, the character limit checker.