FREE · INSTANT · NO SIGNUP

Free Word Counter

Count words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs: plus reading time, speaking time, and top keywords. Updates live as you type.

0
Words
0
Characters
0
No Spaces
0
Sentences
0
Paragraphs
Reading Time
Speaking Time
0
Unique Words
— chars
Avg Word Length
Avg Sentence
Target:

Word Count Guidelines by Content Type

These are widely cited benchmarks for content length across different formats and channels.

Blog Post
1,500 – 2,500 words
Best for SEO and reader engagement
Long-form Guide
3,000 – 5,000 words
Comprehensive coverage, earns links
Landing Page
500 – 1,000 words
Enough to convert, not overwhelm
Email Newsletter
200 – 500 words
Gets to the point fast
LinkedIn Post
150 – 300 words
Algorithm favours native long-form
Research Paper
5,000 – 10,000 words
Depth, citations, methodology
Cover Letter
250 – 400 words
One page maximum
Product Description
100 – 300 words
Scannable with key benefits upfront

Frequently Asked Questions

How does the word counter work?+
The counter splits text by whitespace to count words, counts every character for character counts, detects sentence boundaries (. ! ?) for sentence count, and splits on double newlines for paragraph count. Everything runs in your browser: nothing is sent to a server.
What reading speed is used?+
Reading time uses 200 words per minute (average adult silent reading). Speaking time uses 130 words per minute (average presentation pace). Both are standard benchmarks used by content marketers and publishers.
How many words should a blog post be?+
For SEO, 1,500–2,500 words performs best. Comprehensive guides do well at 3,000+. News and commentary can be 800–1,200 words. Quality and relevance matter more than hitting an exact number.
What is the difference between characters and characters without spaces?+
"Characters" counts every letter, number, space, and punctuation mark. "No Spaces" strips all whitespace: useful for platforms with character limits that exclude spaces, like some academic submission systems.
Does Credify store the text I paste?+
No. All counting happens inside your browser using JavaScript. Your text is never sent to a server, never stored, and never logged.

Free Word Counter Online: Words, Characters, and Reading Time

Word count is a baseline requirement for most types of writing. Academic assignments specify minimum word counts. SEO best practices recommend 1,500–2,500 words for competitive blog topics. This free word counter updates instantly as you type or paste, showing word count, character count with and without spaces, sentence count, paragraph count, and estimated reading and speaking time: based on average reading speeds of 200 and 130 words per minute respectively.

The tool also surfaces your top keywords by frequency. This is useful for checking whether your primary topic keyword appears often enough: a target keyword appearing fewer than 3 times in a 1,000-word article may signal insufficient topic coverage to Google. Unique word count gives a quick sense of vocabulary range, where a higher ratio of unique to total words generally indicates richer, more varied writing. All analysis runs entirely in your browser.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is reading time calculated?

Based on an average silent reading speed of 200 words per minute. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute, the average conversational pace. Both are estimates: actual times vary by text complexity and reader familiarity with the topic.

What counts as a word?

Any sequence of characters separated by whitespace. Hyphenated compounds like "well-known" count as one word. Numbers count as words. Punctuation attached to a word does not count separately.

How long should a blog post be for SEO?

Long-form content of 1,500–2,500 words consistently outperforms shorter posts on competitive keywords. However, word count is not a direct ranking signal: depth, usefulness, and E-E-A-T quality matter more than raw length.

Does this tool store my text?

No. All counting runs locally in your browser. Nothing is transmitted to a server at any point.

More free writing tools

Check readability, detect AI content, analyze keyword density, and more: all free, no signup.

Readability CheckerAI DetectorKeyword DensityAll Tools