Word & Character Counter
Count words and characters, estimate reading time, and spot your most-used keywords. Counts update live as you type — everything runs privately in your browser.
How to use the Word & Character Counter
Paste or type any text into the box on the left. Word and character counts appear instantly on the right — there is no need to click a button. Adjust the Reading Speed slider to match your audience, and the estimated reading time recalculates on the fly.
Scroll down to the Keyword Density table to see the most frequent words in your text and the percentage of the total each one represents. Tick Exclude common stopwords to hide words like "the", "and", and "of" so meaningful terms are easier to spot.
How are the counts calculated?
Words are counted by splitting the text on whitespace and trimming punctuation from each token. Hyphenated words like "well-known" count as one word, matching the behaviour of common word processors.
Reading time uses the formula reading time = word count ÷ WPM, where WPM (words per minute) defaults to 200. Characters includes every character and space; No Spaces excludes all whitespace — useful when checking text against platform limits that ignore whitespace.
Frequently Asked Questions
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How are words counted?
Words are counted by splitting the text on whitespace and removing leading and trailing punctuation. Hyphenated terms like "well-known" count as a single word, matching the behaviour of Microsoft Word and Google Docs.
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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 is estimated by dividing the word count by a reading speed in words per minute (WPM). The default is 200 WPM. Adjust it to roughly 250–300 WPM for skimmable web content or 150–180 WPM for dense technical material.
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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, with common stopwords (the, and, of, to, etc.) excluded by default so meaningful terms are easier to spot. 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 any Unicode text, including accented characters, non-Latin scripts, and emoji. Word counting accuracy may vary for languages that do not use spaces to separate words (for example Chinese or Japanese).
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Is my data private?
Yes — all analysis runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript. No text you enter is transmitted to any server or stored anywhere. See our Privacy Policy for details.