How to Count Words and Estimate Reading Time Online

To count words, paste your text into a word counter: it shows words, characters (with and without spaces), sentences and paragraphs instantly. Reading time is the word count divided by about 238 words per minute; speaking time uses about 150. So a 1,200-word article takes roughly 5 minutes to read and 8 to say aloud. Our free Word Counter does all of this as you type.

How do you use the Word Counter?

1. Open the Word Counter.
2. Type or paste your text: from Word, Google Docs, an email or a website.
3. Read the live tiles: Words, Characters, Without spaces, Sentences, Paragraphs, Reading time, Speaking time and Avg. word length.
4. Check Character limits to see how much room is left for an X post, a meta description, an SEO page title, an SMS, an Instagram caption or a LinkedIn post.
5. Look at Top keywords to see your most used words and their density.

Your text stays in your browser; nothing is sent or saved.

How are words counted?

A word is any run of letters or numbers separated by spaces or punctuation. Hyphenated words like "well-known" count as one. Numbers count as words, and so do short words like "a" and "I". Different tools can differ by a word or two because of edge cases like URLs or emoji, so if a teacher or editor uses a specific program, check with that one for the final number.

How long does it take to read or say?

Words	Reading time (238 wpm)	Speaking time (150 wpm)
300	about 1¼ min	2 min
500	about 2 min	about 3¼ min
1,000	about 4¼ min	about 6¾ min
2,000	about 8½ min	about 13¼ min

Use speaking time to plan a speech, a presentation or a video script. A 60-second video script is about 150 words; a 10-minute talk is about 1,500.

What are the common length limits?

Where	Limit
X / Twitter post	280 characters
Google page title (shown in full)	about 60 characters
Meta description	about 160 characters
SMS	160 characters per message
Instagram caption	2,200 characters
LinkedIn post	3,000 characters

The Word Counter shows each of these with the characters left, or by how much you're over. Search engines cut titles and descriptions by width, not only by character count, so treat 60 and 160 as safe guides rather than hard rules.

Typical word counts for common writing

These are common guides, not strict rules; always follow the brief you were given.

• Blog post: 800–1,500 words for a how-to guide; long, in-depth guides can run 2,000 or more.
• Product description: 50–200 words.
• Cover letter: around 250–400 words, one page.
• Short story: up to a few thousand words.
• University essay: set by your course; stay within about 10% of the limit unless told otherwise.

For search, length alone doesn't rank a page. Answer the question clearly and completely; that sets the right length.

What does keyword density tell you?

The Top keywords table lists your most used words (ignoring filler words like "the" and "and") with how often they appear and their share of all words. Use it to:

• spot words you repeat too much,
• check that the main topic of a page is actually the word you use most,
• avoid stuffing: if one word is far above the rest, rewrite with natural variety.

There's no magic density for SEO. Write naturally and make sure the main term appears in the title, the first paragraph and a heading.

Tips for hitting a word count

• Too long? Cut repeated points, filler phrases ("in order to" → "to") and long introductions. A readability check helps find long sentences.
• Too short? Add an example, a step-by-step section or an FAQ, which also helps readers and search engines.
• Copied text looks odd? Clean it first with Remove Formatting; see how to remove formatting from copied text.

Count your words now

Paste your text into the free Word Counter. When it's the right length, polish it with the Grammar & Writing Checker and change headings with the Case Converter.