Word Counter
Paste or type your text below for an instant count of words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, reading time, and more.
Top Keywords
Start typing to see your most-used words.
How to Use the Word Counter
Click inside the editor and start typing, or paste text from any source — a document, email, essay, article, or social media post. Stats update instantly as you type.
The panel on the right (or below on mobile) shows word count, character count (with and without spaces), sentence count, paragraph count, and estimated reading and speaking times — all updating in real time.
The "Top Keywords" section shows the most frequently used words in your text with usage counts and a visual bar, perfect for checking keyword density in SEO content or essays.
Use the Copy button to copy your text to the clipboard, or Download to save it as a plain-text file. The Clear button wipes the editor so you can start fresh.
Whether you need to hit a word limit for an assignment, stay under a character cap for social media, or estimate how long your speech will take — this tool has you covered.
Twitter/X allows 280 characters per tweet. LinkedIn posts perform best at 150–300 words. College essays typically require 500–650 words. Blog posts rank best on Google at 1,500–2,500 words. Keep an eye on the stats panel to stay within your target.
About the Word Counter
Wordstopia's Word Counter is a free, browser-based text analysis tool that gives you a complete picture of your writing in real time. Unlike basic word counters, it goes beyond a simple tally — tracking characters with and without spaces, sentence and paragraph structure, reading and speaking time estimates, and even the top keywords in your text.
It works for any kind of writing: school essays, blog posts, social media captions, cover letters, speeches, novels, or just a quick note. Because everything runs locally in your browser, your text is never sent to any server — it stays completely private.
Reading time is estimated at 238 words per minute (the average silent reading speed for adults). Speaking time is estimated at 130 words per minute (average conversational speech). These estimates are useful for preparing presentations, podcasts, YouTube scripts, and academic papers.
The Word Counter is part of Wordstopia's growing suite of free language and writing tools, designed to help writers, students, educators, bloggers, and anyone who works with words be more effective and confident in their craft.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is my text saved or stored anywhere?
No. All processing happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your text is never sent to any server and is not stored or logged anywhere. When you close or refresh the tab, the text is gone.
How is word count calculated?
Words are counted by splitting the text on spaces and line breaks, then filtering out empty entries. Hyphenated words like "well-known" are counted as one word. Numbers and punctuation attached to words are counted as part of that word.
How is reading time estimated?
Reading time is based on the average adult silent reading speed of 238 words per minute, which is the figure used by most academic studies. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute, reflecting average conversational speech. Both are rough estimates — actual times vary by individual and content complexity.
What counts as a sentence?
Sentences are counted by detecting terminal punctuation: periods (.), exclamation marks (!), and question marks (?). Abbreviations and ellipses may occasionally cause a slight over-count, but for typical prose the count is very accurate.
What counts as a paragraph?
A paragraph is defined as a block of text separated by one or more blank lines. Single line breaks without a blank line are not counted as paragraph breaks.
Can I use this for social media character limits?
Yes. The character count (with spaces) is the metric most social platforms use. Twitter/X: 280 characters. Instagram captions: 2,200 characters. LinkedIn posts: 3,000 characters. Facebook posts: 63,206 characters. Keep an eye on the "Characters (with spaces)" stat to stay within your platform's limit.
What does "unique words" mean?
Unique words is the count of distinct words in your text (case-insensitive). For example, if "the" appears 15 times, it is still counted as just 1 unique word. A higher ratio of unique words to total words generally indicates a richer, more varied vocabulary.