Paste your text into this word counter and the word count appears as you type, with characters, sentences, paragraphs and reading time next to it. The counting runs on your device.
Type a limit in the Word limit box, say 500 words, and the counter tells you how many you have left. It is a free word counter with nothing to install and no account to make.
What I got when I pasted a 300-word cover letter
I wrote a 300-word cover letter for a customer success job, from "Dear Hiring Manager" to the sign-off, and pasted it in. The card showed 300 words, 1,679 characters, 1,371 without spaces, 19 sentences, 9 paragraphs and a reading time of 2 min.
Some of those numbers need a note.
The sentence counter said 19. I count 17. The letter says "any weekday after 10 a.m. Mountain Time", and the counter treats each period in "a.m." as the end of a sentence. If your sentence count looks high, look for abbreviations first.
The 2 min is rounded up. 300 divided by 238 is 1.26 minutes, and a reader who needs a minute and a quarter is still reading at the one-minute mark, so the card says 2.
Read aloud at 183 words a minute the same letter takes about 1 minute 40 seconds. Spoken at 150, 2 minutes flat. At a careful 130, about 2 minutes 20 seconds.
Keyword density showed me something I had missed while writing. The top entries were "I've" (4 times), "I'm" (3), "every" (3) and "customers" (3). Four "I've" in 300 words is a lot. I would reword two of them.
One more thing. The same letter counts as 302, 303 or 316 words under other counting rules. On a 300-word limit that is the gap between in and over. Which brings me to the table.
Why this word counter and another one disagree
Every counter decides for itself where one word ends and the next begins. The differences only show on the odd cases: hyphens, numbers with commas, web addresses, dashes.
I took 17 short strings and the letter above and counted them five ways on November 6, 2026. The first number column is this counter.
| Text | This counter | Python split() | Regex \w+ | Letters and digits | Browser segmenter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| well-known | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| state-of-the-art | 1 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 4 |
| don't | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 1,250 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| 3.5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| $80,000 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| https://getjobtools.com/word-counter | 1 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 4 |
| name@example.com | 1 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| pay — benefits (em dash with spaces) | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| pay—benefits (em dash, no spaces) | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| 2019–2021 (en dash) | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| sales & marketing | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| U.S. | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| and/or | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| 555-123-4567 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 |
| Hello 👋 (word, space, emoji) | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Hello👋 (emoji glued on) | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 300-word cover letter, full text | 300 | 300 | 316 | 302 | 303 |
How the table was made: I ran each text through this counter's own code, a one-line Python split, a Python regex, a stricter letters-and-digits pattern written for the test, and the word segmenter in Chrome's JavaScript engine.
Microsoft Word stayed out because it is not installed on the test machine, and Microsoft's help page on word count lists what Word counts without saying how it treats hyphens or dashes.
What I take from it:
- Hyphens swing the most. "state-of-the-art" is 1 word here and 4 under a rule that splits on punctuation. A resume full of "cross-functional" and "problem-solving" will read higher on that kind of counter.
- "1,250" is 1 word here and 2 under three of the five rules. The comma breaks it.
- A web address can be worth 1, 4 or 5 words.
- A dash with a space on each side counts as a word here, and so does "&". The spaced dash row shows 3 here and 2 everywhere else. If you like spaced dashes, expect this count to run a word or two above a portal's.
- An emoji counts only when it sits alone between two spaces, and only here and in Python.
- The 316 on the letter comes from the \w+ rule splitting "1,200+", "93%" and "14-page" into pieces.
So leave a margin. Stay 2 or 3 percent under any limit and every tool in the table agrees you are inside it.
Where the reading time comes from
The counter divides your words by 238 words per minute. That is the average silent reading speed for adults reading English nonfiction, from Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review of 190 studies with 18,573 readers.
Fiction reads faster, at 260, but most of what people paste here is nonfiction. Under a minute the time shows in seconds. Past a minute it rounds up, so 500 words shows as 3 min.
For a speech or an interview answer, do not trust the reading time. The same review puts reading aloud at 183 words a minute.
Baruch College's guide to speaking rate puts the average English speaker at about 150 and suggests about 140 when clarity is a problem. For speech length, plan on 130 to 150 and time one practice run.
Our words to pages calculator uses 130 for its speaking time and shows both numbers.
Writing to a limit
Type the limit in the Word limit box or tap a preset.
The bar turns amber at 90 percent and red when you go over, and the text beside it gives the exact gap, like "38 words remaining." The Cover letter preset is 400 words, because a single-spaced page in Times New Roman 12 holds about 500 and you need room for the address block and the sign-off.
For an essay word count set by a school portal, check the limit in the essay length checker first. Those change by year, and some count characters with spaces. Given a page count instead? The words to pages calculator converts it.
Then open Keyword density under the counter. It lists your 10 most used words, skipping words under three letters and 65 common ones like "the". If "responsible" or "team" tops the list on your cover letter, rewrite those lines.
If the main skill from the posting is missing, the reader will miss it too. The ATS resume checker compares your resume with a posting and shows that gap.
Five things it does not do
- It needs spaces between words. Chinese, Japanese or Thai text without spaces counts as one word per line. The character counts still work.
- It does not open files. Copy the text out of Word or Google Docs and paste it in.
- It saves nothing. Reload the page and the box is empty, so copy your text before you leave.
- It shows reading time only. For a speech, divide your word count by 150.
- The paragraph count needs a blank line between paragraphs, and text with no end punctuation counts as one sentence, however long it runs.
Your text stays in your browser. The counting runs in a script of under 100 lines that loads with the page, and nothing you type goes to our servers.
GetJobTools built this online word counter and keeps it up to date. If you find a text it counts wrong, tell us through the about page and we will add it to the test table.
FAQ
Does the character count include spaces?
Yes. The Characters box counts characters with spaces, and line breaks count too. The No spaces box drops every space, tab and line break. If your limit does not say which it uses, assume spaces count, because most portals include them.
How do I check the word count of my essay?
Paste it in the box above and the count is instant. A hyphenated term like "well-known" counts as one word here. Type your limit in the Word limit box to see how far over or under you are.
Do numbers count as words?
Yes. "1,250", "3.5" and "$80,000" each count as one word here, because each sits between two spaces. Some tools split at the comma or the decimal point and count two, and the table above shows which rules do that.
Why does my word count differ from another counter or an application portal?
Each counter handles the odd cases its own way. Ours counts a dash or "&" with a space on each side as a word, and another counter might not. On a 300-word letter the spread across five rules was 300 to 316 words, so stay a few words under any cap a portal enforces.
How is reading time worked out?
Your word count divided by 238 words per minute, the average silent reading speed for adults reading English nonfiction. Reading aloud averages 183 words a minute, and a talk or an interview answer runs 130 to 150.
How do I check the word count in Word?
Look at the status bar at the bottom of the Microsoft Word window, where the word count sits. Click it to see characters, paragraphs and lines too. Word and this page may differ by a few words, since each treats dashes and symbols its own way.
If you have a page target instead of a word count, each link below shows the page count, reading time and a font and spacing table for that many words: