How many words and characters do I have, and how long does it take to read?
Paste text and instantly see: how many words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs. Plus how long an average reader needs to get through it, and how long it takes to read aloud.
Perfect for checking Twitter limits, school essay length, a LinkedIn description, or an Instagram bio.
Below the numbers we show the most common words in your text, useful for checking that you're not repeating yourself too often.
How to use it
- Paste the text into the box, statistics appear automatically.
- Below the main numbers you see the character breakdown (letters, digits, spaces, punctuation).
- Then the most common words in your text, clicking one highlights it.
- All numbers update live as you edit the text.
When this is useful
Typical reasons to count words and characters:
- Character limits on Twitter (X): 280 characters max. Check whether you fit before posting.
- School or college essay: "minimum 1500 words" says the teacher. Check whether you're there.
- Profile descriptions for CV, LinkedIn, Instagram bio: each has its own limit (Instagram bio 150 chars, LinkedIn headline 220, etc.).
- Writing work: know your word count and estimate book length (a novel is around 80,000 words).
- Speech preparation: speaking time is calculated at 130 words per minute. A 30-minute talk is about 4,000 words.
- Check for word repetition: the most-common-words table shows that "important" appeared 15 times. Maybe swap it for "key" or "essential" in some places.
If you want to change letter case across the text, use our letter case converter. To generate placeholder text for a project, try the Lorem ipsum generator.
Questions and answers
A word is a sequence of characters separated by whitespace (spaces, tabs, newlines). "Hello world" = 2 words. "Hello-world" = 1 word (the hyphen doesn't separate). "I.e. or e.g." = 2 words (dots don't separate). This is the international standard for word counts.