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Top 10 words by frequency (common words excluded)
| Word | Count | % |
|---|
Words: We split text on whitespace and count non-empty segments. A hyphenated phrase like "well-known" counts as one word. Numbers like "2025" count as words. This matches Microsoft Word's approach closely, though edge cases (abbreviations, contractions, unusual punctuation) may differ by ±1%.
Characters: Using the Intl.Segmenter API, we count grapheme clusters so that emoji and accented characters (é, ñ, etc.) each count as 1, not multiple bytes.
Characters without spaces: We count all characters except spaces, tabs, and line breaks.
Sentences: We count by matching sentence-ending punctuation (. ! ? …) followed by whitespace or end-of-text. Note: this simple rule can misfire on abbreviations like "Dr. Smith" — it may count those as two sentences. For highly technical text with many abbreviations, the figure may be high.
Paragraphs: A paragraph is a block separated by one or more blank lines. A single block with no breaks = 1 paragraph.
Reading time: We divide word count by 238 words per minute (the average silent reading rate for English non-fiction adults, per Brysbaert 2019). Displayed as minutes:seconds with a minimum of <1 min.
Speaking time: We divide word count by 130 words per minute (formal presentation pace, per ASHA guidelines). You can adjust both rates above.
Note on CJK text: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean have no spaces between words. Our word-count algorithm will count each CJK character as one word, which is misleading. For CJK text, use the character count as your meaningful metric.
Below are common text lengths and their estimated reading and speaking times at the default rates (238 wpm for reading, 130 wpm for speaking).
| Word Count | Reading Time | Speaking Time |
|---|---|---|
| 250 | 1 min | 2 min |
| 500 | 2 min | 4 min |
| 750 | 3 min | 6 min |
| 1,000 | 4 min | 8 min |
| 1,500 | 6 min | 12 min |
| 2,000 | 8 min | 15 min |
| 5,000 | 21 min | 39 min |
Most academic institutions and publications enforce word limits as hard caps, though a grace margin of 5–10% is common. Some allow footnotes and citations to fall outside the limit. Always check your specific guidelines — an essay assigned as "2,000 words max" may accept 2,100 but not 2,200.
Use the optional word limit field above to track your progress. The meter turns yellow (warning) at 90% and red (over) at 100%.
No. Your text is only saved to your browser's localStorage for that session. We never send it to a server, and it's deleted when you clear your browser data. All counting happens instantly on your device.
A hyphenated phrase like "mother-in-law" counts as one word. This matches Microsoft Word and most style guides. Single-letter hyphenated suffixes like "x-ray" are also one word.
Word-counting algorithms vary slightly. Differences arise from how they handle contractions (don't = 1 or 2?), hyphenated words, numbers, and abbreviations. Our method is aligned with Microsoft Word and is accurate to within ±1% for typical English prose.
Yes. Use the input fields above the stats to set your own reading speed (100–400 wpm) and speaking pace (80–250 wpm). Your choices are saved to your browser and will be remembered on your next visit.
We exclude common stop words (the, a, and, or, is, that, etc.) from the keyword density table. These are too frequent to be meaningful. The list shows content words that actually matter to your text.
Both are counted correctly as single characters. An emoji like 👍 or an accented letter like é counts as one character, not multiple bytes. Character count reflects what you see on screen.