About Word Counter
Paste a draft and the counts appear as you type: Words, Characters with and without spaces, Sentences, Paragraphs, Unique words, Avg word length and Longest word. Two time estimates sit alongside them. Reading time divides the word count by 225 words per minute, a typical silent reading pace, and Speaking time divides it by 130, a steady presentation pace. So 1,000 words shows as a 5 minute read and an 8 minute talk, and a 5 minute speech needs about 650 words. Your text is counted in the browser and is not uploaded.
Words to minutes: reading time and speaking time by word count
What the counter reports for each length. Under a minute it shows seconds; from a minute up it rounds up to the next whole minute.
| Words | Reading time (225 wpm) | Speaking time (130 wpm) |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 27 sec | 46 sec |
| 250 | 2 min | 2 min |
| 300 | 2 min | 3 min |
| 500 | 3 min | 4 min |
| 650 | 3 min | 5 min |
| 750 | 4 min | 6 min |
| 800 | 4 min | 7 min |
| 1,000 | 5 min | 8 min |
| 1,200 | 6 min | 10 min |
| 1,500 | 7 min | 12 min |
| 2,000 | 9 min | 16 min |
| 2,500 | 12 min | 20 min |
| 3,000 | 14 min | 24 min |
| 5,000 | 23 min | 39 min |
| 10,000 | 45 min | 77 min |
Long texts stay in minutes: 10,000 words reads as 77 min of speaking, not 1 hour 17 minutes.
How many words for a speech of 1 to 30 minutes
The word count that fills each slot exactly at 130 words per minute, with the count at two other paces for comparison.
| Speech length | Slow (100 wpm) | This counter (130 wpm) | Brisk (150 wpm) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 minute | 100 | 130 | 150 |
| 2 minutes | 200 | 260 | 300 |
| 3 minutes | 300 | 390 | 450 |
| 5 minutes | 500 | 650 | 750 |
| 10 minutes | 1,000 | 1,300 | 1,500 |
| 15 minutes | 1,500 | 1,950 | 2,250 |
| 20 minutes | 2,000 | 2,600 | 3,000 |
| 30 minutes | 3,000 | 3,900 | 4,500 |
Pauses, slides, audience questions and applause all take time that a word count cannot see. Leave a margin rather than writing to the last word.
Reading time formula, and how to adjust it for your own pace
minutes = word count / words per minute
The counter uses 225 words per minute for reading and 130 for speaking, and these two speeds cannot be changed in the tool. To use a different pace, take the Words figure and divide it yourself. A 1,800-word article at a careful 150 words per minute is 12 minutes. Dense technical or academic material is read more slowly than general prose, so treat the Reading time shown as a lower bound for that kind of text. For speaking, time yourself reading one page aloud to find your own rate, then divide.
What counts as one word: hyphens, numbers, symbols and links
The counter splits text only at spaces, tabs and line breaks. These results come from the tool.
| Text | Words counted | Why |
|---|---|---|
| state-of-the-art | 1 | Hyphens do not split a word |
| well - known | 3 | A hyphen with spaces around it is counted as its own item |
| don't can't it's | 3 | Each contraction is one word |
| The year 2026 cost $4.50 & more | 7 | Numbers, prices and a lone & each count |
| rock and roll 24/7 | 4 | 24/7 has no space, so it is one word |
| https://example.com/a-long-url | 1 | A link has no spaces |
| Hello , world ! | 4 | Punctuation with a space before it is counted separately |
| word1,word2;word3 | 1 | No spaces after the punctuation, so nothing is split |
Text pasted from a PDF sometimes loses the space after a comma or full stop, which lowers the count. Stray punctuation with spaces around it raises it.
Word count with and without citations
In-text citations and reference lists are counted like any other text, so remove them first if your limit excludes them.
With in-text citations
Climate change is real (Smith, 2020). It affects crops (Jones & Lee, 2019, p. 4).
15 words, 81 characters including spaces, 3 sentences
The abbreviation p. followed by a space is read as the end of a sentence, which is why 3 sentences are reported.
Citations removed
Climate change is real. It affects crops.
7 words, 41 characters including spaces, 2 sentences
The two citations accounted for 8 of the 15 words.
The sample text the counter opens with
Writing well is hard. Writing clearly is harder. (blank line) Good tools do not make you a better writer, but they do remove the busywork so you can focus on the words that matter.
32 words, 168 characters including spaces, 136 without, 3 sentences, 2 paragraphs, 27 unique words, reading time 9 sec, speaking time 15 sec
How sentences, paragraphs and unique words are counted
- A sentence ends at a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark followed by a space, or at any line break. I came. I saw. I conquered. is 3 sentences.
- Abbreviations inflate the sentence count. Dr. Smith went home. He slept. is reported as 3 sentences because Dr. looks like an ending.
- A heading or list item on its own line counts as a sentence even without a full stop.
- A paragraph is a block of text separated from the next by a blank line. Lines separated by a single line break belong to the same paragraph.
- Unique words ignores capital letters, so The, the and THE are one word. Punctuation is not stripped, so dog and dog. are treated as two different words and the figure runs slightly high.
- Avg word length is the no-spaces character count divided by the word count, so attached punctuation is included.
- Characters are counted as whole symbols: an accented letter is 1 and a simple emoji is 1.
Using Word Counter
- 1
Click into Your text and type, or paste a draft copied from a document, email or web page.
- 2
Read Words and the two Characters figures (including spaces, and no spaces) in Text statistics.
- 3
Check Reading time (about 225 wpm) for something people will read, or Speaking time (about 130 wpm) for a speech, script or voiceover.
- 4
Use Sentences, Paragraphs, Unique words, Avg word length and Longest word to judge how the text is built.
- 5
Edit the text in the box until the numbers match your limit. The statistics refresh on every change.