Word & Character Counter
Count words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and reading time in your text.
Text Statistics
Word count breakdown: 0 CJK characters + 0 Latin words (CJK is counted per character, Latin per word; punctuation and spaces excluded).
Top 5 Keywords
What Is the Word & Character Counter?
The Word & Character Counter is a free, real-time text analysis tool that instantly measures the length and complexity of any written content. As you type or paste text, it automatically updates six key metrics: total word count, character count (with and without spaces), sentence count, paragraph count, estimated reading time, and the top 5 most-used keywords. Chinese, Japanese and Korean text is supported: CJK characters are counted one unit each, Latin text one unit per word, and mixed text is added up from both. Whether you're a writer, student, blogger, SEO specialist, or developer, this tool helps you stay within character limits, optimize readability, and understand how long readers will engage with your content.
How to Use This Tool
Using the counter is effortless. Simply type directly into the text area or paste any existing content — blog posts, essays, social media captions, emails, or code comments. All statistics update instantly with every keystroke, so there's no need to click a button. The reading time estimate uses 238 English words per minute and 400 CJK characters per minute, timed separately and added together, and is displayed both as a value and as a visual progress bar. The Top 5 Keywords section identifies the most frequently used meaningful tokens by filtering out common English stop words, giving you an immediate sense of your text's thematic focus. For CJK text the tokens are single characters, not words — a browser has no CJK segmentation dictionary and we do not fake one. Use the Clear button to reset, Copy Text to copy your content to the clipboard, or Load Sample to test the tool with example text.
Common Use Cases
Writers & bloggers use it to hit ideal article lengths (typically 1,500–2,500 words for SEO) and gauge how long a post takes to read. Students rely on it to meet word-count requirements for essays and assignments without manually counting. Social media managers check character counts to stay within Twitter/X's 280-character or LinkedIn's caption limits. SEO specialists analyze keyword frequency to ensure proper keyword density and avoid over-optimization. Developers verify that UI copy fits within database field constraints. Whatever your use case, this tool provides instant clarity — no sign-up, no ads, completely free.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is the word count calculated?
Every CJK character (Chinese, Japanese kana, Korean hangul) counts as one unit. After the CJK characters are removed, every remaining run of letters or digits counts as one word — so hyphenated words like "well-known" count as one, and punctuation and whitespace are not counted at all. Mixed text is added up from both parts, and the breakdown under the statistics grid shows exactly how many came from each. Honest note: before 2026-07-26 this tool split on whitespace only, which meant a whole Chinese paragraph counted as a single word and reading time showed 0 sec. That is fixed.
What is the difference between "characters" and "characters without spaces"?
The Characters count includes every single character in the text — letters, numbers, punctuation, and spaces. Characters without spaces subtracts all whitespace characters, giving you the count of visible/printable characters only. This distinction matters for platforms like Twitter that count spaces toward the limit.
How is reading time estimated?
English and CJK are timed separately and then added together: 238 words per minute for English (Brysbaert 2019, adult silent reading of non-fiction) and 400 characters per minute for CJK. The result is shown in seconds for short texts and minutes plus seconds for longer ones. This is an estimate — actual reading speed varies by individual and content complexity.
How are "Top 5 Keywords" determined?
The tool splits your text into the same units used for the word count, removes common English stop words (like "the," "is," "and," "a," etc.) and Latin words shorter than 3 characters, then counts the frequency of what is left. The five most frequent tokens are displayed as keyword tags with their occurrence count. For CJK text the tokens are individual characters rather than words, because the browser has no CJK word-segmentation dictionary. The previous version stripped every non-Latin character before counting, so Chinese text produced no keywords at all.
Is my text stored or sent anywhere?
No. All processing happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your text never leaves your device — nothing is sent to any server. You can even use this tool offline after the page has loaded.
What counts as a sentence or paragraph?
Sentences end at ASCII . ! ? ; or at the CJK equivalents 。！？…； and a newline also ends a sentence. ASCII terminators only count when followed by a space, a closing quote or the end of the text, so decimals such as "3.14" are not split in two. Known limitation: abbreviations such as "Dr. Smith" still split, because there is no abbreviation dictionary in the browser. Paragraphs are counted as blocks of text separated by one or more blank lines (double newlines). A single block of text with no blank lines counts as one paragraph.