Word Counter

Words are counted by splitting text on whitespace (spaces, tabs, newlines) and filtering out empty strings. Hyphenated words like 'well-being' count as one word.

The word counter does not count spaces as words — it counts words by splitting on whitespace. The character counter provides two separate counts: one including spaces and one excluding them, so you can use whichever figure is relevant to your use case.

Yes — the word counter works with any language that uses spaces to separate words, including Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and most European languages. For languages that do not use spaces (such as Chinese, Japanese, or Thai), word boundaries differ and the count may not reflect traditional word counts for those scripts.

Most SEO research suggests that long-form blog posts of 1,500–2,500 words tend to rank better in search results because they cover topics in greater depth. However, the right length depends on your topic and audience — a quick how-to guide may only need 600–800 words, while a comprehensive guide might exceed 3,000 words. Quality and relevance matter more than hitting an arbitrary word count target.

Yes — the word counter counts all text you paste or type, including headings, subheadings, and titles. If you want to count only the body text, paste just that portion of your content without the headings.

Word count measures the number of distinct words separated by spaces or line breaks, treating 'running' and 'run' as two different words of one count each. Character count measures every individual character — letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and spaces — making it the relevant metric for platforms that impose character limits rather than word limits.

Yes — simply click inside the text area and paste your content using Ctrl+V (Windows) or Cmd+V (Mac). The counts update instantly as soon as text appears. You can also type directly into the box or use the Sample Text button to load example content.

Punctuation marks attached to words (such as commas, periods, or quotation marks) do not create extra word counts — they are treated as part of the surrounding word. Standalone punctuation characters or symbols separated by spaces would be counted as a token, but this is uncommon in normal writing.

The Flesch Reading Ease score rates text on a 0–100 scale. Higher scores indicate easier reading. A score of 60–70 is considered standard (suitable for most audiences). Scores below 30 are very difficult (academic or legal text). Hemingway's novels typically score around 65.

Reading time is calculated at 238 words per minute (the average adult reading speed). Speaking time uses 130 words per minute. Both are shown in minutes, rounded up.

No. All analysis happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your text never leaves your device and is never sent to any server. We cannot see your content.

Syllable counting uses a heuristic algorithm based on vowel groups, which is approximately 85–90% accurate on standard English text. Unusual words, proper nouns, and acronyms may be counted differently than expected. Professional publishing tools use similar heuristics.

The Gunning Fog Index estimates the years of formal education needed to understand a text on the first reading. A score of 12 means a high school graduate should understand it. Most popular novels score 6–8. Legal documents often score 20+.

Top words shows the most frequently used content words in your text. Common words like 'the', 'a', 'and', 'is' (called stopwords) are excluded so you see meaningful keywords instead.

Yes — the character count shows the exact number of characters including spaces. Twitter/X posts allow 280 characters, LinkedIn posts allow 3,000 characters, and Instagram captions allow 2,200 characters.