Word & Character Counter (Free, Private)
Count words, characters, sentences, and reading time. Everything runs on your device; files are never uploaded.
Counts update as you type. Text is never sent anywhere; close the tab and it's gone.
Common length targets
Most writing tasks come with a number attached, and half the battle is knowing what the number is. The limits people check most often:
| Target | Limit |
|---|---|
| X (Twitter) post | 280 characters |
| SMS, single message | 160 characters |
| Google Ads headline | 30 characters |
| Meta description | ~155 characters before Google truncates |
| Page title tag | ~60 characters |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 characters |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 characters |
| Common App college essay | 650 words |
| UCAS personal statement | 4,000 characters |
| Cover letter | 250 – 400 words |
| Abstract (most journals) | 150 – 300 words |
Two of these trip people up constantly. Meta descriptions are truncated by pixel width rather than a strict character count, so ~155 characters is a guideline that keeps you safe, not a hard wall. And the Common App’s 650 words is a hard wall: the form physically stops accepting text, so an essay drafted at 700 words needs real cutting, not hope.
Who actually needs a count
Students live by these numbers: a 650-word application essay, a 2,000-word assignment with a 10% tolerance, an abstract that must fit in 250 words. Writers and editors check article lengths against an editor’s brief and use reading time to gauge whether a post respects the reader’s attention. Anyone writing ad copy works inside unforgiving boxes, 30 characters for a headline, 90 for a description line, where one character over means the platform rejects the text. Translators and some freelancers price work per word or per character, so the count is literally the invoice.
Reading time earns its place too. At 200 words per minute, a 1,000-word article is a five-minute read, which is the kind of number newsletters and blogs put under the headline so readers can decide whether to commit.
How the counting works, and where tools disagree
The counter splits your text on whitespace to count words, tallies characters both with and without spaces, finds sentence boundaries at periods, question marks, and exclamation points, and treats blank-line breaks as paragraph boundaries. Reading time is the word count over 200. Everything recalculates as you type, in the page itself; there’s no submit button because there’s no server to submit to.
Whitespace splitting is the same approach most word processors use, but edge cases differ between tools. “Well-known” is one word here and in Word, two in some older counters. A URL pasted mid-sentence counts as one word however long it is. Numbers like 3.5 don’t end a sentence, but an abbreviation like “Dr.” technically does, which can inflate the sentence count by one or two in formal writing. None of this moves a word count enough to matter against a 650-word limit; if you’re within five words of a hard cap, trim a sentence and stop worrying.
If the finished text is headed into a document for submission, the JPG to PDF and merge PDF tools on this site handle the packaging step, locally, the same way this counter does.
Frequently asked questions
Is my text stored or sent anywhere?
No. Counting happens in your browser's memory as you type. Nothing is saved, logged, or transmitted, and the text is gone the moment you close the tab. You can paste a confidential draft without a second thought.
How is reading time calculated?
Word count divided by 200 words per minute, a common average for adult silent reading. If you're timing a speech, plan on a slower pace, roughly 130-150 words per minute out loud.
Why does my count differ slightly from Microsoft Word?
Different tools split text differently. This counter splits on whitespace, so a hyphenated term like well-known counts as one word. Tools disagree most around hyphens, slashes, and URLs, but the gap is rarely more than a handful of words.
Characters with or without spaces: which do limits use?
Almost all platform limits, including X's 280 characters and SMS's 160, count spaces. The without-spaces figure matters mainly in translation and some publishing work, where rates are quoted per character of actual text. The tool shows both.
What counts as a sentence or a paragraph?
Sentences are split at period, question mark, and exclamation point boundaries; paragraphs are blocks separated by a blank line. Abbreviations like Dr. can nudge the sentence count up, so treat it as a close estimate rather than gospel.