Free Online Word Counter & Character Counter
Paste or type your text below to count words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, and reading time instantly. The counter is free, requires no signup, and runs entirely in your browser — your text is never uploaded.
What This Word Counter Tool Measures
The On Notepad online word counter reports eight figures at once, updated on every keystroke: words, characters, characters without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, lines, reading time, and speaking time. Everything is calculated locally with JavaScript, so it works offline after the page loads and there is no upload step, no queue, and no waiting.
- Words Whitespace-separated tokens, the same method used by Word and Google Docs.
- Characters Every character including spaces — the number most limits (tweets, meta descriptions, SMS) enforce.
- Sentences Text segments ending in a period, question mark, or exclamation mark.
- Paragraphs Blocks of text separated by a blank line.
- Reading time Words ÷ 200 wpm, the average adult silent reading speed.
- Speaking time Words ÷ 130 wpm, a comfortable presentation pace.
Common Word and Character Limits
Use the character counter to stay inside platform limits before you publish. These are the limits people check most often:
- Google title tag — about 50–60 characters before truncation
- Google meta description — about 150–160 characters
- X (Twitter) post — 280 characters
- Instagram caption — 2,200 characters
- SMS message — 160 characters per segment
- LinkedIn post — 3,000 characters
- College application essay (Common App) — 650 words
- Typical blog post — 1,000–2,000 words
How to Count Words Online
- Paste or type your text into the box at the top of this page. There is no file size limit for normal documents.
- Read the counts — words and characters appear in large type, with sentences, paragraphs, lines, and reading time beneath.
- Edit in place to trim your text down to a limit; the numbers update as you type.
- Open in Notepad if you want to keep working with formatting, multiple notes, and autosave, or Copy to take the text elsewhere.
Free, Private, No Signup
Like every tool on On Notepad, the word counter is 100% free, needs no account or signup, and is private by design: your text stays in your browser's local storage and is never sent to our servers. The text you enter here is saved automatically so it survives a page refresh, and the Clear button removes it completely.
Need a live word count while you write with formatting, multiple notes, and autosave?
Open the Free Online NotepadNo signup · Autosave · Notes stay on your device