Your text
Counts update as you type. A refresh will not lose your work.
Word target
For assignments, applications and anything with a limit.
Set a target to track how far along you are.
Readability
How demanding the text is to read, on the Flesch reading ease scale.
Most-used words
Common connecting words are left out.
| Word | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Keywords appear once you have written a few words. | ||
What the numbers mean
Words and characters
Words are counted by splitting on whitespace, which matches how word processors count. Two character figures are shown: one including spaces and punctuation, which is what social platforms enforce, and one excluding whitespace, which some academic and publishing guidelines use instead.
Sentences and paragraphs
Sentences are found by terminal punctuation — full stops, question marks and exclamation marks. Paragraphs are counted by blank lines between blocks. Both are useful signals for pacing, since very long sentences and very long paragraphs are the two most common reasons writing feels heavy.
Reading time
The silent reading estimate uses 200 words per minute, a common benchmark for adult reading of general prose. The read-aloud figure uses 130 words per minute, which is closer to a comfortable speaking pace — the one to use when you are timing a speech, a voiceover or a presentation.
Reading the readability score
The Flesch reading ease score rates text from 0 to 100 using average sentence length and average syllables per word. Higher means easier. Roughly:
- 90–100 — very easy, around a fifth-grade reading level.
- 70–89 — easy to fairly easy, typical of popular fiction and friendly marketing copy.
- 60–69 — plain English, the band most general-audience writing aims for.
- 30–59 — fairly difficult to difficult, common in academic and technical writing.
- Below 30 — very difficult, the register of dense professional and legal prose.
Treat it as a rough instrument rather than a verdict. It measures sentence and word length, not clarity of thought, so short-sentenced nonsense scores well. Use it to notice when your sentences have quietly crept up in length — not as a number to optimise.
Using the keyword table
The table lists the ten most frequent meaningful words in your text, ignoring common connectors like "the", "and" and "of". The share column is that word's percentage of your total word count.
Two things are worth watching. First, unintentional repetition — a word you have leaned on five times in three paragraphs, which reads as a tic. Second, for anything published online, whether the subject of the piece actually appears in the words you used; if an article about running shoes never mentions running, both readers and search engines struggle to place it. What you should not do is push a word's density up on purpose. That reads badly to people and has been counterproductive for search rankings for many years.
Where word limits bite
Academic assignments set hard limits with marks deducted for overrunning. Journalism and blogging work to house lengths. Social platforms cap characters rather than words. A meta description for search results is effectively limited to about 155 characters. University applications, grant forms and job applications frequently cap both. A live count takes the guesswork out of all of them.
Frequently asked questions
Is my text uploaded anywhere?
No. Counting, scoring and keyword analysis all run in your browser. Nothing is transmitted.
Where is my draft saved?
In your browser's local storage on this device, so a refresh or an accidental tab close does not lose it. Clear removes it immediately, and it is never sent to a server.
Does the character count include spaces?
Both figures are shown. The main count includes spaces and punctuation, matching how social platforms count; a second figure excludes whitespace.
Why does my count differ slightly from Microsoft Word?
Word processors disagree on edge cases such as hyphenated compounds, numbers with separators, and text inside footnotes or captions. On ordinary prose the difference is usually nothing, or a word or two.
Can I count text in another language?
Word, character, sentence and paragraph counts work for any language that separates words with spaces. The readability score and syllable estimate are calibrated for English, so ignore those otherwise.