Word Counter
Count words, grade readability, and spot repeated keywords — instantly.
Also known as: Word count tool, Text counter, Readability calculator
How it works
- 1Paste or type your text into the box — nothing is uploaded, so pasting from your clipboard works instantly.
- 2Watch word, character, sentence, and paragraph counts update live as you type.
- 3Scroll down for your readability grade, reading/speaking time, and top repeated keywords — all updating the same way.
- 4Use the copy button to grab your text back out, or clear to start over.
Why use Word Counter
Readability, not just a count
Most counters stop at a number. This one grades how easy your text actually is to read, using the same formulas teachers and editors rely on.
Real keyword density
Roughly eighty common stopwords are filtered out first, so your top-keyword list reflects your actual content words, not "the" and "and".
Speaking time, not just reading time
Useful for scripting a presentation, video, or voiceover — not just estimating how long a reader will spend on the page.
Detail most tools skip
Unique word count, average word length, and your longest word — small details that catch repetitive or overly dense writing.
Nothing ever leaves your browser
No network request carries your text anywhere — not to a server, not to an analytics script, not anywhere at all.
Free, unlimited, no account
Check as many drafts as you want, with no daily cap and nothing to sign up for.
Who uses Word Counter
Hitting an assignment's word count
Check an essay or paper against a minimum or maximum word count before submitting it.
Staying inside a cover letter limit
Trim a cover letter or professional bio down to a word or character limit set by an application.
Freelance writing billed by the word
Get an exact, reliable word count for invoicing a client on a per-word freelance contract.
Simplifying text for a general audience
Use the readability grade to check whether a public-facing explainer reads as plainly as it needs to.
Checking keyword usage before publishing
Confirm a target keyword appears often enough in a blog post or article without looking stuffed.
Timing a speech or video script
Use the speaking-time estimate to check whether a script fits inside a set time slot.
About Word Counter
A plain word count only answers one question, and most days that's not really the question you have. A student needs to know if an essay hits the assignment's minimum. A freelancer billing by the word needs an exact number before invoicing. But just as often the real question is different: will a general reader find this easy to follow? Am I overusing one phrase without realizing it? How long will this take to read out loud? A number alone can't answer any of that.
This tool's readability section is built around two well-established formulas — Flesch Reading Ease and the related Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level — which estimate how difficult a passage is to read based on sentence length and how many syllables its words carry. Longer sentences stuffed with long words score as harder to read; short, plain sentences score as easier. Teachers, technical writers, UX copywriters, and anyone writing for a general audience use scores like these as a sanity check — not a hard rule, but a useful signal when a paragraph reads more like a legal brief than you intended.
The keyword density panel exists for a more specific reason: writers optimizing content for search engines need to know whether their target phrase actually shows up often enough in a piece, without accidentally repeating it so often that it reads unnaturally or looks like keyword stuffing to a search engine. This tool tokenizes your text, strips out roughly eighty extremely common English words ("a", "in", "is", "they", and so on) that would otherwise dominate any frequency list, and shows you the top ten words that are actually left — each with a raw count and a percentage of your total word count.
Every one of these calculations happens with plain JavaScript running in the page itself. There is no server call, no analytics beacon, and no third-party script that ever sees what you've typed — a meaningful difference from sites that quietly run tracking or ad scripts alongside a "free" counter. Once the page has loaded, the tool keeps working even if your connection drops, because there was never anything to fetch or send in the first place.
Word Counter vs. other options
How Open Tools Library compares to desktop software and other online tools.
| Feature | Open Tools Library | Desktop software | Other online tools |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, unlimited | Free (built into Word/Docs) | Often free, some ad-heavy |
| Installation | None | Required | None |
| Data privacy | Never leaves your device | Stays local | Often sent to a server |
| Readability scoring | Built in, free | Not shown by default | Rare, often a separate paid tool |
| Keyword density | Built in, stopword-filtered | Not available | Rare |
| Speed | Instant, live as you type | Instant | Varies by site |
Pro tips
- Aim for a Flesch Reading Ease score in the 60s or higher if you're writing for a general audience — that roughly maps to an 8th–9th grade reading level.
- Long, run-on sentences push your grade level up fastest — splitting one long sentence into two often helps more than swapping individual words.
- For SEO writing, a keyword density around 1–2% is a common, safe target; above 3% starts to look like stuffing to both readers and search engines.
- The reading-time estimate assumes about 200 words per minute — a technical or dense passage will genuinely take longer than that for most readers.
- Unique word count is a quick way to spot when you're leaning on the same handful of words too often across a longer piece.
- Paste text from anywhere — a Google Doc, an email draft, a PDF you've copied text from — the counter doesn't care about the source.
Technical specs
- Live update
- Yes, on every keystroke
- Readability formulas
- Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
- Reading speed assumption
- 200 words / minute
- Speaking speed assumption
- 130 words / minute
- Text length limit
- None enforced
- Processing location
- 100% local, in your browser
Privacy & security
Drafts often reveal more than a finished piece ever will — an unfinished essay, a confidential pitch, notes you're not ready to share — so it matters where that text goes while you're just checking a count.
Every keystroke is counted locally in your browser tab — nothing is transmitted anywhere, not even for analytics.
No account, login, or email address is required to use any part of this tool.
Refresh or close the tab and your text is gone — nothing is stored server-side, ever.
Works exactly the same for a private journal entry as it does for a public blog draft.
Frequently asked questions
Is my text uploaded anywhere while I'm typing?
No. Every count and score is calculated locally in your browser — your text is never sent to a server, not even for analytics.
What reading and speaking speeds does it assume?
Reading time assumes 200 words per minute; speaking time assumes 130 words per minute, both common averages for adult readers and speakers.
What counts as a good Flesch Reading Ease score?
Higher is easier to read. 60–70 is considered standard, plain-English writing; 90+ is very easy (roughly 5th-grade level); below 30 is difficult, dense, academic-style writing.
Does it count contractions and hyphenated words as one word?
Yes — "don't" and "well-known" are each counted as a single word, matching how most word processors count them.
Is there a limit on how much text I can paste in?
No hard limit — very long documents just take a moment longer to analyze, entirely on your device.
Can I use this to check SEO content before publishing?
Yes — the keyword density panel is built for exactly that, showing your most-repeated content words with their frequency percentage.
Does the tool save or remember what I typed?
No. Nothing is stored anywhere — refresh or close the tab and the text is gone for good.
Troubleshooting
My readability score is showing as empty
Readability scoring needs at least one complete sentence with ending punctuation (a period, question mark, or exclamation point) to calculate — add a full sentence and it will appear.
The keyword list looks empty even though I have a lot of text
This usually means your text is mostly common stopwords, or every content word only appears once. Keywords need to repeat at least twice to show up in the density list.
A hyphenated word is being counted as one word — is that right?
Yes, that matches how most word processors count hyphenated words like "well-known" — as a single word rather than two.
The reading time doesn't match how long it actually takes me to read
It's an average estimate based on 200 words per minute. Dense, technical, or unfamiliar text will genuinely take longer for most readers than the estimate suggests.
Related searches
Landed here looking for something worded a little differently? Word Counter covers all of these too:
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