Why does my word count differ from Word, Google Docs or wc?

There is no single standard. Tools disagree on hyphenated words, dashes, numbers and URLs, and many treat a whole Chinese sentence as one word. This page states its rules so you can compare like with like; if a deadline depends on the number, use the tool your reader or teacher uses.

How is reading time worked out?

Words divided by a reading speed. The default 238 words per minute for silent reading and 150 for speaking are commonly quoted averages. Real speed varies with the text and the person, so change the numbers to match you.

Is my text uploaded or saved?

No. The counting runs in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere or stored. Closing or refreshing the page clears the box.

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Word and character counter

Paste your text and see the counts straight away: words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, how long it takes to read, and whether it fits a limit such as an X post or a meta description. It works for Chinese and Japanese too. Your text stays in this page and is never uploaded.

Your text

Counts

Words: 0
Characters: 0
Characters without spaces: 0
Lines: 0
Sentences: 0
Paragraphs: 0
Unique words: 0

Reading and speaking time

Reading silently: 0 sec
Reading aloud: 0 sec

Speeds used (change them to match you)

Reading, words per minuteSpeaking, words per minuteReading Chinese/Japanese, characters per minuteSpeaking Chinese/Japanese, characters per minute

Defaults are rough averages that are often quoted, not measurements of you: 238 words per minute for silent reading and 150 for speaking. The 300 characters per minute for Chinese is also a rough average, and the speaking figure of 189 is just that number scaled by the same ratio as English, because there is no widely agreed figure. Hard, technical or unfamiliar text takes longer.

Character limit

Limit

Limits are as published by the platforms, and they change. Some count links, emoji or Chinese characters differently (X counts every link as a fixed length and weighs Chinese characters double; SMS drops to 70 per message once an emoji or Chinese character is used), and search engines cut titles by pixel width, so treat the numbers as a guide. Characters here are counted with spaces and line breaks.

Most used words

Hide common English words (the, and, of, ...)

Nothing to show yet.

Words are lower-cased and trimmed of punctuation. Chinese and Japanese characters are listed one by one and no common words are hidden for them.

Clean up the text

Merge repeated spaces and tabsTrim the start and end of every line and of the textReduce several blank lines to one

This edits the text in the box above, on your device only. Indentation made with Chinese full-width spaces is left alone.

Counting rules: a word is a run of characters between spaces that contains a letter or digit; every Chinese or Japanese character counts as one word; a character is what you see as one symbol, so an emoji or a letter with an accent is one. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded.

How the counting works

•A word is a run of characters between spaces that contains a letter or a digit. So "well-known" and "don't" are one word each, and a lone dash is not a word. The command-line tool wc counts every space-separated chunk, dashes included, which is why its total can be a little higher.
•Chinese and Japanese do not put spaces between words, so each Han or kana character counts as one word and mixed text adds the two together. For those languages the character count is the number to use. Korean is written with spaces, so its words are counted like English words.
•Characters are counted the way you see them: an emoji, a family emoji or a letter with an accent is one character, and a Windows line break is one character. wc -m counts the underlying code points instead, so it reports more for these.
•Sentences end at . ! ? or at 。！？ and decimals like 3.14 do not end one. Abbreviations such as "e.g." can add an extra sentence, so treat that number as an estimate. Paragraphs are blocks separated by a blank line, and the last line break at the end does not add a line.
•Reading and speaking time use average speeds that you can change. They are rough averages, not a measurement of you.

Questions

Why does my word count differ from Word, Google Docs or wc?: There is no single standard. Tools disagree on hyphenated words, dashes, numbers and URLs, and many treat a whole Chinese sentence as one word. This page states its rules so you can compare like with like; if a deadline depends on the number, use the tool your reader or teacher uses.
How is reading time worked out?: Words divided by a reading speed. The default 238 words per minute for silent reading and 150 for speaking are commonly quoted averages. Real speed varies with the text and the person, so change the numbers to match you.
Are the character limits exact?: They are the figures the platforms publish and they change. Some platforms count links, emoji or Chinese characters differently, so use them as a guide and check the platform when a post is close to the edge.
Is my text uploaded or saved?: No. The counting runs in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere or stored. Closing or refreshing the page clears the box.