Free Online Character Counter & Word Counter
Count characters, words, and sentences as you type. See your reading time, reading level, and how your text stacks up against limits for X, Instagram, SEO titles, and more — all instantly, right in your browser.
Whether you need a character count with spaces, without spaces, or a full word count, this tool updates live as you type — no sign-up, no waiting.
Everything You Need to Check Your Text
Get sentence counts, paragraph counts, word length, common spelling mistakes, and more — all calculated instantly in your browser as you type.
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✓ Runs entirely in your browser
✓ Your text is never sent anywhere
✓ Free, no sign-up required
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Characters
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Chars Left
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Chars (No Spaces)
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Words
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Sentences
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Paragraphs
0m 0s
Reading Time
0m 0s
Speaking Time
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Reading Level
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Avg Word Length
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Avg Sentence Length
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Longest Word
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Longest Sentence
Spelling & Repetition Check
Checks your text against a list of commonly misspelled words — all done locally, without sending anything to a server.
0 Issues Found
- No common spelling mistakes found.
Repeated Word Check
No words are repeated too often.
- Your word variety looks good.
Character Limit Status
Common Platform Character Limits
â–¼Most Frequent Words
- Start typing to see your most frequently used words.
Character Breakdown
Why Character Counts Matter
Most platforms enforce hard limits on how much text you can post. Go over 60 characters on an SEO title and Google truncates it with “…” in search results. Go over 280 on X and the post won’t send at all. A meta description past 160 characters gets cut off before readers see your full pitch.
Knowing your exact count before you hit publish means you’re not guessing — you can trim a sentence, tighten a headline, or confirm you’re well within the limit, without trial and error on the live platform.
How Each Number Is Calculated
- Characters (with spaces): Every letter, number, space, punctuation mark, and line break you type.
- Characters (no spaces): Same as above, but spaces are excluded. Useful for platforms that only count actual content, not whitespace.
- Words: Counted by splitting your text on spaces. Extra spaces and line breaks are ignored so you get an accurate total.
- Sentences: Counted by looking for periods, question marks, and exclamation points followed by a space or line break.
- Paragraphs: Counted by line breaks in your text.
- Reading and speaking time: Based on an average silent reading speed of 225 words per minute, and an average speaking pace of 140 words per minute.
- Reading level: Uses the Automated Readability Index (ARI), which estimates the U.S. grade level needed to understand your text based on average word and sentence length.
Common Character Limits by Platform
- SEO Titles (60 Chars)
- Meta Descriptions (160 Chars)
- Google Ads Headlines (30 Chars)
- X (Twitter) Posts (280 Chars)
- Instagram Captions (2,200 Chars)
- TikTok Captions (2,200 Chars)
- LinkedIn Posts (3,000 Chars)
- SMS Messages (160 Chars)
- YouTube Titles (100 Chars)
- YouTube Descriptions (5,000 Chars)
Frequently Asked Questions About Character Counting
What is the difference between counting characters with spaces vs without spaces?
Characters with spaces count every keystroke, including the spaces between words. Characters without spaces strip those out, leaving just letters, numbers, and punctuation. Most platforms — X, Google search results, SMS — count with spaces. Some publishing or academic word-count rules only care about characters without spaces, so check the specific requirement you’re working with.
How is reading time calculated?
Reading time is based on an average adult reading speed of about 225 words per minute. Reading level looks at your average word length and sentence length — longer words and longer sentences push the grade level up, while short, simple sentences bring it down.
Is my text saved or sent to a server?
No. Everything happens locally in your browser — your text is never sent to a server or stored anywhere. You can close the tab and it’s gone.
Do emoji count as one character or more?
It depends on the platform, not on this tool’s basic count. Most emoji are stored as multiple underlying characters (called code points), so a platform like X typically counts a single emoji as 2 characters even though it looks like one symbol on screen. If your count looks higher than expected after adding emoji, that’s usually why — check the Character Breakdown panel to see how your text is actually being split up.
Does a line break count as a character?
Yes. Every line break (pressing Enter) counts as one character toward your “Characters (with spaces)” total, the same way a space does. This matches how most platforms — including SMS and social media character limits — count line breaks, so the number you see here should match what you’d hit on the live platform.
Why does my word count look different from Microsoft Word or Google Docs?
Word processors sometimes count contractions, hyphenated words, or numbers differently. This tool counts words by splitting on spaces and ignoring extra whitespace, which is the same method most social platforms and SEO tools use. If you need an exact match to a specific word processor’s count, treat this as a close estimate rather than an identical number — the two methods can differ by a word or two on longer text.
Does pasting text from Word or Google Docs affect the count?
It can, if the pasted text carries invisible formatting characters or extra spaces along with it. If your count looks unexpectedly high right after pasting, try pasting as plain text (Ctrl+Shift+V or Cmd+Shift+V in most browsers) instead of a regular paste, then compare the count.
Does the counter work with non-English text?
Yes — the character count works with any language, including accented characters (é, ñ, ü) and non-Latin scripts (Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean). One thing to know: some platforms count non-Latin scripts differently than the tool’s default character count. X, for example, counts most CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) characters as 2 characters each rather than 1, so if you’re writing for X in one of those languages, expect your platform-side count to run higher than what shows here.
Why does my “Chars Left” number show as negative?
A negative number in red means you’ve gone over whatever limit you’ve selected. For example, if you’ve set the limit to 280 (X Posts) and your text is 288 characters, “Chars Left” will show -8. Trim 8 characters and the number returns to 0 or positive.
What’s the difference between the Reading Level score and the reading time?
Reading time estimates how long an average adult takes to read your text out loud or silently, based on words per minute. Reading Level is a separate measure — the Automated Readability Index (ARI) — that estimates how difficult your text is to understand, expressed as a U.S. grade level, based on your average word and sentence length. A short piece of text can have a fast reading time but a high reading level if the words and sentences are complex.
Can I use this tool for an essay or assignment with a strict word count?
Yes. Paste your essay into the box and the Words counter updates live as you type or edit, so you can watch it in real time rather than checking after the fact. If your assignment specifies a character count instead of a word count, use the Characters counter the same way.
Does the tool save my text anywhere?
No. Everything — the counting, the spelling check, the reading level calculation — runs locally in your browser using JavaScript. Nothing is sent to a server, stored in a database, or logged. Refreshing the page or closing the tab clears your text completely.
Why did the spelling check not catch a mistake in my text?
The Spelling & Repetition Check compares your text against a list of commonly misspelled words rather than a complete dictionary. It’s built to catch frequent, easy-to-miss typos (like “recieve” or “seperate”) rather than every possible spelling error. For a full dictionary-level spellcheck, pair this tool with your browser’s or word processor’s built-in spellchecker.
What counts as a “sentence” for the sentence count?
The tool counts sentences by looking for periods, question marks, and exclamation points that are followed by a space or a line break. Because of this, text with unusual punctuation — like abbreviations ending in a period (e.g., “Dr.”) or ellipses — can occasionally be counted as more than one sentence. For most standard writing, the count will match what you’d expect.
Is there a limit to how much text I can paste in?
There’s no hard cap built into the tool itself, so you can paste in anything from a single sentence to a full article. Very long documents (multiple thousands of words) may take a brief moment to recalculate stats like Reading Level and Most Frequent Words, since those are computed across the entire text each time you type.