Words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, and estimated reading time — updated live.
Paste or type text and every figure updates as you go. The counts are mechanical, so knowing the rules behind them tells you when to trust a number.
Four hundred words at the page's 200 words per minute is a 2-minute silent read. Spoken aloud at 130 words per minute, the same text is about 3 minutes.
Scale it to a real brief. A 1,500-word essay is a 7.5-minute read by the same assumption, and a 250-word product description is about 75 seconds. Those figures are for a comfortable adult reader on unfamiliar material.
Now the sentence trap. "Dr. Lopez arrived at 3.5 miles." has two periods that are not sentence endings, and a splitter that treats every period as one reports three sentences. In a document full of abbreviations, decimals, or version numbers, the sentence count runs high and the average words per sentence runs low.
The word count is the reliable figure. It is defined by whitespace splitting, which matches how most word processors count and how most word limits are applied. Differences between tools usually come from how they treat hyphens, em dashes, and numbers.
Reading time is a convention, not a measurement of your audience. Two hundred words per minute is a common adult silent reading rate, and 130 a common speaking rate. Technical material with formulas is slower, a familiar story is faster, and neither changes the word count.
Character counts are what constraints actually use. A meta description, a form field, or a social post limit is measured in characters, sometimes with spaces and sometimes without, and the difference matters more than the word count does.
Nothing is uploaded. The text stays in your browser, which is why this is safe for a draft you would not paste into a random website.
Words divided by 200 for silent reading and by 130 for speaking, with a minimum of one minute. Both are stated conventions rather than measurements of your specific reader.
Both, because different limits use different rules. Check which one the form or platform requires before trimming.
Abbreviations, decimals, and ellipses contain periods that the splitter treats as endings. The word and character counts are unaffected; only the sentence count drifts.
Yes, because the text is counted as plain characters. A bulleted list contributes each item's words, and a table pasted as text contributes its cell contents.
No. It is processed in your browser and is gone when you close the page. Nothing is uploaded or stored.
That is an editing judgement, not a counting one. Short paragraphs help online, and a word target is a constraint rather than a goal. The counter tells you where you are, not where you should be.
The 200-word and 130-word rates are conventions this page states. They are not measurements of your audience.
Last updated: November 2, 2026. Reviewed by David Liu. Counts are mechanical. Reading time is an assumption.