Does Your Word Counter Upload Your Text?
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Read guideLive writing metrics, locally calculated
Word & Character Counter
Count words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs as you type. Measure reading time, readability, keyword density, phrase frequency, and writing structure without uploading your text.
Instant live countsReadability & keywordsPrivate browser analysis
How to use the word and character counter
Paste, type, or open a text-based PDF in the editor. The counter updates the number of words, characters, characters without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, and lines as you write. Use it to check an essay word limit, prepare a social media post, edit web copy, or measure a long document.
Open Speed to estimate reading and speaking time at a pace you choose. Add minimum and maximum goals under Targets, then use the combined progress indicators to see whether the draft is below, within, or above its intended length.
The Density tab lists frequent terms and their percentage of the text. Select one or more rows to compare where those words occur. The Phrases tab shows common unigrams, bigrams, and trigrams, while Sentence Rhythm and Paragraph Structure visualize the shape of the draft.
How are the counts calculated?
Words are counted with locale-aware Unicode boundaries when your browser supports them, so text without spaces—such as Chinese, Japanese, and Thai—is handled more accurately. A Unicode-aware compatibility method is used in older browsers.
words = locale-aware word segments
density = ( word count ÷ total words ) × 100
Characters includes letters, numbers, punctuation, spaces, and line breaks. No Spaces excludes whitespace. Reading and speaking time divide the relevant word or character count by the selected speed; Chinese and Japanese use character-based presets.
Readability, keyword, and phrase analysis
Readability uses Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG, and Coleman-Liau for English; Fernández-Huerta and Szigriszt-Pazos for Spanish; Kandel–Moles for French; and the Wiener Sachtextformel for German. Each formula uses sentence length, word length, letter count, or estimated syllables and should be treated as guidance rather than a definitive rating.
Keyword density shows individual word frequency, while the n-gram tables reveal common one-, two-, and three-word phrases. These measurements can help editors notice repetition and topic gaps, but they are diagnostic signals rather than keyword targets. Clear, useful writing should take priority over reaching a particular density percentage.
Sentence Rhythm compares sentence lengths, and Paragraph Structure compares paragraph sizes. Click a bar to select the corresponding passage in the editor. For long documents, zoom and pan the chart to inspect a smaller section without losing its place in the full text.
Frequently Asked Questions
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How are words counted?
Words are counted with your browser's locale-aware Unicode word boundaries, with a Unicode-aware compatibility method for older browsers. This recognizes punctuation, accented text, mixed scripts, and many languages that do not separate every word with spaces.
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What is the difference between characters and characters without spaces?
Characters includes every character plus spaces and line breaks. Characters without spaces excludes all whitespace, which is useful when comparing against publisher or platform limits that ignore whitespace — for example some SMS and metadata limits.
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How is reading time calculated?
Reading time uses words per minute for English-compatible text and characters per minute for Chinese and Japanese. The language selector controls the units and presets, and every speed remains adjustable for the audience and material.
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What do the readability scores mean?
The selected language determines the formula. English grade scores and the German Wiener score estimate a school or difficulty level, where lower is generally easier. Spanish and French scores measure reading ease, where higher is easier. Use several paragraphs and treat every result as an estimate rather than a precise rating.
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What does keyword density mean?
Keyword density is the percentage of total words that a given word represents. The list shows the most frequent words in your text, using a local stopword list for the selected language when available. It is a lightweight indicator — for full SEO work, also consider context, synonyms, and natural language variations.
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Can I use this counter for text in other languages?
Yes — the counter works with Unicode text, including accented characters, non-Latin scripts, and emoji. Modern browsers use locale-aware word segmentation for languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Thai; results can still vary for ambiguous language-specific boundaries.
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Can I open a PDF or save my text as a PDF?
Yes. You can extract selectable text from a PDF for analysis. Images and scanned pages are ignored. Use Save as PDF to open your browser's print dialog and create a PDF from the editor text.
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Is my data private?
Yes — analysis runs entirely in your browser and no text is transmitted to a server. When Autosave is enabled, the current draft and settings are stored only in this browser. Disable Autosave or choose New to remove the saved draft. See our Privacy Policy for details.
