0
Words
0
Characters
0
Chars (no spaces)
0
Sentences
0
Paragraphs
~0 min read
Count words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs — free, no sign-up, nothing leaves your browser.
Word and character limits vary a lot by context, and it's easy to lose track while writing. A few common benchmarks: X (formerly Twitter) caps standard posts at 280 characters; the Common App college essay must fall between 250 and 650 words, enforced by the platform itself; and a cover letter is generally expected to stay short, often cited as roughly one page or a few hundred words. If you've been given a strict limit — a job application, a competition entry, a form field — it's worth checking whether the limit is stated in words or characters, since the two can differ significantly depending on average word length, and whether the platform enforces it automatically or just states it as guidance.
Based on an average adult reading speed of about 200 words per minute — a commonly used estimate, though actual reading speed varies by person and text.
By splitting on sentence-ending punctuation (. ! ?). This is a simple approximation — abbreviations like "Mr." can occasionally be miscounted as sentence breaks.
Mostly down to how each tool handles edge cases — whether a hyphenated word ("well-known") counts as one word or two, whether numbers and standalone symbols count as words, and how consecutive whitespace or line breaks are treated. There's no single universal standard, so small differences between tools are normal and usually don't indicate a bug in either one.
It works for any language that separates words with spaces (English, French, German, Spanish, and many others). Languages that don't use spaces between words, like Japanese or Chinese, aren't counted the same way a native word-counting tool for that language would handle them.
No. Everything is calculated locally in your browser as you type — nothing is sent to a server.