Free tool · Content
Word counter.
Paste or type a text. You get the words, the characters including and excluding spaces, the sentences and paragraphs, the reading and speaking time, and the five words you use most. Everything stays in your browser.
- Free
- Open access
- Counts as you type
- Unlimited text
Reference lengths
- Title tag60 chars
- Meta description155 chars
- Post on X280 chars
- 10-minute talk1,500 words
Characters are counted with spaces, as the platforms do.
- Words
- 50
- Characters
- 269
- Excluding spaces
- 220
- Sentences
- 3
- Paragraphs
- 1
- Reading time
- 1 min
- Speaking time
- 1 min
- Words per sentence
- 16.7
The text
Google ranks a page for its answer, whatever its word count. A page ranks when it answers the query completely, and a complete answer can take 300 words or 3,000 words. Count your words, then read the pages that already rank for the query and see what your draft needs.
What the count means
- Under 300 words: enough for a snippet, thin for an article
- Sentences average 16.7 words: easy to follow
- Too long for a meta description: 114 characters over
- Fits a post on X (280 characters)
| # | Most frequent words | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | words | 3 | 6.0% |
| 2 | ranks | 2 | 4.0% |
| 3 | page | 2 | 4.0% |
| 4 | answer | 2 | 4.0% |
| 5 | count | 2 | 4.0% |
- Words
- Characters
- Excluding spaces
- Sentences
- Paragraphs
- Reading time
- Speaking time
- Words per sentence
What the count means
Keep typing: the most frequent words, stop words aside, appear here.
| # | Most frequent words | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
How to read the count.
- 01
Words, the way editors count them
A word is anything between two spaces. "Well-known" is one word, "3,000" is one word, a lone dash is one too. That is how word processors count, so the figure matches what a client or an editor will see on their side.
- 02
Two character counts
Including spaces is what X, LinkedIn and ad platforms measure. Excluding spaces is what translators and some publishers bill on. A title tag is cut at about 60 characters and a meta description at about 155, spaces included.
- 03
Time, and the words that come back
Reading time assumes 200 words a minute, speaking time 150. The frequency table drops stop words such as "the" and "of" and keeps the five words you repeat most. The subject of the page should appear there: that is how you confirm the page is about what you think.
Length is a budget, set by the query.
Google has said it for years and the data agrees: a page ranks on coverage, whatever its word count. A page ranks when it covers the query better than the ten pages already there. For a definition that can be 300 words. For a buying guide against thorough competitors it is often 2,000, because that is what completeness costs.
Where the count does matter is in the places with a hard limit. A title tag is cut at about 60 characters, a meta description at 155, a post on X at 280. Those limits are in characters with spaces, and one over is a truncated line in the results.
The frequency table is the cheapest audit there is. Paste a draft and look at the five words at the top. The query you want to rank for belongs among them, and only the content itself can put it there, whatever the length. If one word is above 3 percent, you are repeating yourself.
Questions
- How do I count words in a text?
- Paste or type the text in the field above. The count updates on every keystroke and covers words, characters including and excluding spaces, sentences and paragraphs. Everything stays on your device: the counting happens in your browser, so you can safely paste confidential drafts.
- How many words should an SEO article be?
- Google has said it repeatedly: a page ranks on how well it covers the question, whatever its word count. What correlates with ranking is completeness: for a definition, 300 words can be enough; for a buying guide competing against thorough pages, 1,500 to 2,500 is often what completeness costs. Base your length on what currently ranks for your query.
- How is reading time calculated?
- From an average silent reading speed of 200 words per minute, the low end of what adults manage on screen, rounded up to the next minute. It is an estimate: dense technical prose reads slower and a listicle reads faster, so treat it as a guide for the reader.
- What is the difference between reading time and speaking time?
- People read faster than they speak. Reading time uses 200 words a minute; speaking time uses 150, the pace of a clear presenter or a podcast host. Use the second one to size a script, a voice-over or a talk: a 10-minute slot holds about 1,500 words.
- Does the counter work for characters with spaces?
- Yes, both counts are shown side by side. The distinction matters for meta descriptions, ad copy and social posts, where platform limits are expressed in characters including spaces.
- Which words does the frequency table ignore?
- Common function words in English and French, such as "the", "of", "and", "le", "de" or "et", plus single letters. What remains is the vocabulary that carries the subject. The term you want the page to rank for belongs in the top five: that is the sign the text is really about it.
Tools that go with it
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Readability Checker
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Keyword Density Checker
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SEO URL Slug Generator
Generate clean, SEO-friendly URL slugs from any title. Handles accents, stop words and length.
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Counting words is the easy part. Writing forty articles is the work.
Tonaily writes every article to the length the query needs, scored before it ships and tracked after. Plug your site and see which pages it would write first.
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