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About Word Count Online

This tool counts words, characters (with and without spaces), sentences, paragraphs, and reading time for any piece of text. It also shows the most frequently used words and estimates speaking time.

Word counts come up everywhere: writers tracking daily output, students hitting essay length requirements, social media users staying within character limits, and professionals respecting LinkedIn or Twitter constraints.

Reading time uses the standard 200–250 words-per-minute average for silent reading; speaking time uses 130 wpm for spoken delivery. The estimates help when planning a presentation, a podcast script, or a video voiceover.

How to use this tool

How to count words, characters, and reading time

  1. Paste your text

    Put the content into the Text field. The limit is 500,000 characters — roughly a novel.

  2. Set reading speed

    "Reading speed (words/min)" controls the readingMinutesAtWpm output. Default is 220 (adult silent reading); news anchors run ~150, fast readers ~400. Range is 100–600.

  3. Press Run

    The result returns characters, charactersNoSpaces, words, lines, paragraphs, sentences, and readingMinutesAtWpm.

  4. Interpret the numbers

    "Words" splits on whitespace; "Sentences" splits on . ! ?; "Paragraphs" splits on blank lines. CJK text (no spaces between words) will under-count — use characters instead.