Count words, characters and reading time
Paste anything — an essay, a tweet, a product description — and get live counts of words, characters (with and without spaces), sentences and paragraphs, plus how long the text takes to read silently (200 words per minute) or deliver aloud (130 words per minute). Your text never leaves the browser: everything is counted locally, with no upload, storage or tracking of what you type.
Common length limits
Handy targets when you are writing to fit a platform:
| Platform / format | Limit |
|---|---|
| X (Twitter) post | 280 characters |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 characters |
| Meta description (SEO) | ~155 characters |
| SMS (single message) | 160 characters |
| Common App college essay | 650 words |
How the estimates work
Words are whatever remains after splitting the text on whitespace, so "state-of-the-art" is one
word and numbers count too. Sentences are split on runs of . ! and
?, and paragraphs on blank lines. A 500-word article, for example, is about
3 minutes of reading (500 ÷ 200, rounded up) and about 4 minutes
of speaking (500 ÷ 130, rounded up) — anything under a minute shows as "< 1 min".
Average word length (characters per word, excluding spaces) is a quick readability signal: everyday English averages around 4–5 characters per word, while academic or technical prose often runs longer. If yours is well above 6, consider shorter words and sentences.