Word Counter_
Paste a draft and the word count is the first thing you see, at the size the question deserves — then pages at both spacing conventions, reading and speaking time, and the smaller counts underneath. Set a target and the line under the box counts down to it, or tells you how far past it you have gone.
Nothing here is uploaded. That matters more on this page than it sounds: the four highest-ranking word counters are attached to grammar checkers and AI detectors, and your unsubmitted essay or unpublished manuscript is the input they are asking for.
- Input
- Any writing you type or paste — a draft, a chapter, a thesis section, a pasted document. There is no length limit and no file to upload.
- Output
- The word count first, then pages under both spacing conventions, reading and speaking time, and characters, sentences and paragraphs underneath.
- Processing
- Counted in this tab by the browser's own locale-aware segmenter, the same one your operating system uses to decide where a word ends. Past 100,000 characters the work moves off the typing path so the box never stutters.
- Limits
- A page count is a convention, not a measurement. Real pagination depends on the font, the spacing, the margins and where your headings fall — the numbers here assume 250 words to a double-spaced page and 500 to a single-spaced one.
- Your target
- A word target is a brief, not a ceiling. Going over 2,000 words is not an error the way exceeding a 280-character post limit is, so the tracker reports both directions and colours neither of them red.
Counting words is less obvious than it looks
What actually counts as one word
Splitting on spaces is the answer everybody reaches for and it is wrong in ordinary English before you get to anything exotic. don’t is one word, not two. 3.5 is one word, not a word and a fragment. An em dash pressed against both neighbours—like this—is not glue. This page asks the browser’s own segmenter, the same component your operating system uses to decide where a double-click selects, so the boundaries match what a person would draw. Chinese, Japanese and Thai carry no spaces at all, and the same segmenter still finds the words in them; a space-splitting counter reports one enormous word and stops.
Where the word count lives in the app you are already using
Most people arriving at a word counter are not looking for a website — they are looking for a menu item they cannot find. In Google Docs it is Tools → Word count, or Ctrl+Shift+C (⌘+Shift+C on a Mac), and the dialog has a Display word count while typing checkbox that pins a live count to the bottom-left corner. In Microsoft Word it is already in the status bar along the bottom; clicking it opens the full breakdown, and Review → Word Count gets you there from the ribbon. If it is missing from the status bar, right-click the bar and switch it back on. In Apple Pages it is View → Show Word Count, and the readout appears at the bottom of the window where you can drag it aside. The table below collects those, and the reason to use this page instead is a selection you cannot easily make in a document: counting one paragraph, one pasted quote, or text that lives in a form field rather than a file.
Pages, and why nobody can promise you one
“About eight pages” is a brief written by somebody who was looking at their own margins. Pagination is decided by the typeface, the point size, the leading, the margin width, how many headings you use and where your paragraphs happen to break — none of which a word count can see. What the conventions do give you is a number you can write towards: 250 words to a page double-spaced, 500 single-spaced, both assuming a 12-point serif face and one-inch margins. Those two figures are what most departments and most publishers mean when they say pages, and converting the brief once at the start beats discovering at midnight that eight pages was four thousand words.
Why two counters disagree about the same paragraph
Word counts differ between tools for reasons that are all defensible and none of which are announced. Microsoft Word counts numbers standing alone as words and this page does too, but Word also counts text inside text boxes and footnotes that a copy-paste into a browser leaves behind. Some counters treat a hyphenated compound as two words, some as one. Some skip headings. Some count a URL as one word and some as five. If a submission has a hard limit, the only count that matters is the one produced by whatever the marker or editor opens it in — use this page to write towards the number, then confirm in that program before you submit.
Paste the draft, set the target, write to it
- 01Paste or type. The word count updates on every keystroke, and nothing is sent anywhere while you do it.
- 02Type your word limit into Target. The line beneath the box turns into a countdown — words remaining while you are under, words over once you pass it.
- 03Read the pages figure for whichever spacing your brief assumes, and the reading time if you are writing something that will be read aloud.
- 04Confirm the final number in whatever program you are submitting from. Counters disagree, and the one that decides is theirs, not this one.
Four drafts and the number each one is chasing
An essay with a hard limit
Two thousand words, ten per cent either way. Set the target and the countdown does the arithmetic you would otherwise do badly at one in the morning.
2000
153 words remaining · 7.4 pages double-spaced
A chapter against a manuscript brief
Publishers talk in words, not pages, and a 90,000-word novel is roughly 3,000 a chapter across thirty. Counting per chapter keeps the shape even.
a finished chapter
3,112 words · 12.4 pages double-spaced · 13 min 5 sec reading
Copy that has to be read aloud
A three-minute conference talk or a video script is a speaking-time problem wearing a word-count costume. 130 words a minute is the working average.
a draft script
412 words · 3 min 10 sec speaking · 1 min 44 sec silent reading
A personal statement capped in characters
Application portals usually cap characters, not words, and count for you only after you paste. The target field here is in words, so read the character tile — or use the character counter, which meters the published limits.
a finished statement
628 words · 3,980 characters · 2.5 pages double-spaced
Where the word count is in each program
| Program | How to get to it | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Google Docs | Tools → Word count, or Ctrl+Shift+C (⌘+Shift+C on Mac) | Pages, words, characters, characters without spaces — and a Display word count while typing checkbox for a live corner readout |
| Microsoft Word | Look along the bottom edge — it is in the status bar already. Clicking that readout opens the full breakdown, and Review → Word Count reaches the same dialog | Words, pages, characters, paragraphs, lines. Select text first for a count of just that selection |
| Apple Pages | View → Show Word Count | Words at the bottom of the window; click the readout to switch it to characters, paragraphs or pages |
| This page | Paste anything, including text that is not in a document at all | Words first, then pages, reading time, characters, sentences and paragraphs — plus a target you set yourself |
Word Count missing from Word's status bar? Right-click the status bar and switch it back on. Verified against each vendor's own current documentation; menus move, so the path is what to look for rather than a promise.
Words to pages, at the two conventions briefs are written in
| Words | Double-spaced | Single-spaced | Roughly |
|---|---|---|---|
| 250 | 1 page | 0.5 page | a long paragraph |
| 500 | 2 pages | 1 page | a blog post, a short answer |
| 1,000 | 4 pages | 2 pages | a news feature |
| 2,000 | 8 pages | 4 pages | a standard undergraduate essay |
| 5,000 | 20 pages | 10 pages | a long-form article or seminar paper |
| 10,000 | 40 pages | 20 pages | a dissertation chapter |
| 90,000 | 360 pages | 180 pages | a full-length novel manuscript |
Both columns assume 12-point serif type and one-inch margins, which is the assumption almost every style guide is quietly making. Change the font and the arithmetic changes with it.
Habits that make a word limit painless
- Convert the brief to words before you start writing, not after. "Eight pages" and "two thousand words" are the same instruction, and only one of them can be counted while you type.
- Count the section you are working on rather than the whole draft — paste one part and the number tells you something you can act on.
- Most limits have a tolerance, usually ten per cent. Write to the middle of the band and the final trim is editing rather than surgery.
- Quotes and references often sit outside the limit. Count them separately by pasting them on their own instead of trying to subtract in your head.
- If the count is being read aloud, the speaking figure is the honest one: a three-minute slot is about 390 words, no matter how short that looks on the page.
- Check the final number in the program you will submit from. This page is for writing towards a target; theirs is the one that decides.
When a word count is not the number you needed
The top results want your text for something else
Four of the highest-ranking word counters are attached to a grammar checker, a paraphraser or an AI detector, and the counting is the doorway. An unsubmitted essay or an unpublished chapter pasted into one of those has been handed to a service whose business is processing it. This page counts and stops — the network tab stays empty and there is no account to make.
Pages are a convention, and everyone quotes a different one
You will find 250, 275, 300 and 500 words per page quoted as authoritative, all of them true under some combination of font, size and margin. Nothing that only sees your words can know your layout. Treat the figure as a planning number and let the document have the last word.
Your program may be counting things you cannot see
Microsoft Word counts footnotes, endnotes and text boxes when they are in the flow, and pasting into a browser leaves all of them behind. A draft that reads 2,040 here can read 2,300 there. If the limit is hard, the gap is worth checking before it matters.
A PDF is not text until something extracts it
Counting the words in a PDF means pulling the text layer out first, and a scanned PDF has no text layer at all — only pictures of words. This page counts what you can select and copy; if you cannot select it, no word counter can count it without doing OCR first.
Character limits and word limits are different problems
Application forms and social platforms usually cap characters, not words, and the two do not convert reliably — English averages a little over five characters per word plus a space, but your writing is not the average. When the limit is in characters, count characters: the tile is right there, and the character counter adds per-platform meters for the ones with published ceilings.
How the counting is done
- Words
- The browser’s
Intl.Segmenterat word granularity, counting only word-like segments — so contractions and decimals are one word each, punctuation is none, and unspaced scripts still segment. WithoutIntl.Segmenterthe page falls back to splitting on whitespace and the count becomes an approximation - Characters
- Grapheme clusters — what a reader perceives as one character. An emoji is 1, an accented letter typed as two code points is 1
- Sentences and paragraphs
- Sentences by the same segmenter at sentence granularity; paragraphs are blocks separated by a blank line, and whitespace-only blocks are not counted
- Pages
- 250 words per double-spaced page, 500 per single-spaced, rounded to one decimal so a part-finished page stays visible
- Reading / speaking
- 238 wpm silent reading · 130 wpm speaking, rounded — averages worth planning against rather than promises.
- Large documents
- Past 100,000 characters the segmentation yields between chunks, so typing stays responsive on a full manuscript
- Network
- None from tool code. A test sweep calls every function this page uses with
fetchandXMLHttpRequestreplaced by stubs that throw, so a stray request fails the build instead of shipping. Disconnect from the network and the page still works.
Questions about counting words
How many pages is 1,000 words?
Four double-spaced or two single-spaced, at 12-point serif type with one-inch margins. That is the convention nearly every brief assumes without saying so. Your actual document will differ once headings, figures and a different font are involved — the table above converts the common milestones, and the tool prints the figure for whatever you have written.
Why is my count different from Microsoft Word’s?
Usually because Word is counting something the paste left behind — footnotes, endnotes and text boxes are included there and absent here. Hyphenated compounds and standalone numbers are the other common disagreement between any two counters. If a limit is hard, write towards it here and confirm the final figure in the program you are submitting from.
Where is the word count in Google Docs?
Tools → Word count, or Ctrl+Shift+C — ⌘+Shift+C on a Mac. Tick Display word count while typing in that dialog and it pins a live count to the bottom-left corner for the rest of the session.
Does it count Chinese or Japanese properly?
Yes, because it does not rely on spaces. The browser’s segmenter finds word boundaries in unspaced scripts the same way your operating system does when you double-click. A counter that splits on whitespace reports one enormous word for the same paragraph.
Can it count the words in a PDF or a Word file?
Not directly — there is no file upload here, by design. Open the document, select the text, and paste it. That works for any PDF with a real text layer; a scanned PDF is images of words and would need OCR before any counter could touch it.
Is my writing sent anywhere?
No. The counting is JavaScript running in this tab, there is no account and no upload button, and you can disconnect from the network and keep typing. That is worth checking wherever you paste unpublished work — several of the most popular word counters exist to feed a grammar or AI-detection product.
How long does 500 words take to read aloud?
Three minutes and fifty-one seconds at 130 words per minute, which is the working average for a prepared talk. Silent reading runs closer to 238 wpm, so the same 500 words is roughly two minutes on the page. Both figures are printed live above.