Word Counter – Count Words & Characters

How it works

1. Type or paste the text you want to analyze.
2. All stats update in real time as you type.
3. Use select or copy to grab the input text for use elsewhere.

Why people use a word counter

Meeting word limits

College essays, cover letters, and social media bios all have word or character limits. Paste your draft here to see the count instantly.

Estimating reading time

Reading time assumes 200 words per minute, a standard estimate for adult English reading.

Estimating LLM token costs

The estimated token count gives you a rough idea of how much a prompt will cost with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or other language models.

Methodology

Words are counted by splitting on whitespace. Sentences are counted by terminal punctuation (. ! ?) followed by a space or end of text. Paragraphs are blocks separated by one or more blank lines. Token count is estimated at roughly 1 token per 4 characters.