What is a word and character counter?
A word and character counter is a free tool that quickly counts the number of words, characters, sentences and paragraphs in your text. It also estimates the approximate reading time based on an average reading speed of 200 words per minute.
How to use the word counter?
Type or paste your text into the input field and click "Calculate". The counter will display:
- Total character count (with and without spaces)
- Word count
- Sentence count
- Paragraph count
- Estimated reading time
What is the word counting formula?
Words are counted by splitting the text at whitespace boundaries. Characters include all symbols — letters, numbers, punctuation and spaces. Characters without spaces count only visible characters, excluding all whitespace.
Word counting examples
The text "Hello world, how are you?" contains 5 words, 26 characters, 22 characters without spaces, and 1 sentence. The reading time is less than 1 minute.
When to use a word counter?
A word counter is useful when writing essays, articles, social media posts or any text with length requirements. Students, writers and marketers frequently use this tool to verify text length and stay within character limits.
How many words are on a page?
An average A4 page contains approximately 250–300 words using a 12-point font and standard margins. This corresponds to roughly 1500–1800 characters including spaces.