Count words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs instantly as you type. Free, unlimited, and 100% private: your text never leaves your device.
Check against a platform limit
Top 5 most-used words
Free Online Word & Character Counter – Count Words, Characters, and Sentences Instantly
Whether you are writing an essay with a strict word limit, a resume that needs to stay on one page, a tweet that has to fit inside 280 characters, or an SEO meta description that search engines will cut off past 160 characters, knowing your exact count matters. Our free word and character counter updates live as you type, showing your word count, character count with and without spaces, sentence count, paragraph count, and an estimated reading time, all in one place.
You can also check your text against common platform limits, including X (Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, SMS messages, and SEO meta titles and descriptions, with a progress bar that turns red the moment you go over. A built-in keyword list shows the five words you use most often, which is useful for spotting repetition before you publish. Quick case-conversion buttons let you switch your text to UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case, or Sentence case in a single click.
Who Uses a Word & Character Counter?
Students use it to stay within essay and assignment word limits — the difference between 1,499 and 1,500 words can be the difference between an accepted submission and a rejected one. Writers, bloggers, and journalists use it to track article length, meet editor requirements, and estimate how long a reader will spend on the page. Social media managers use it to keep captions and posts inside platform character limits: a tweet that runs one character over will simply not post, and an Instagram caption that runs long gets truncated behind a "more" link. SEO content writers use it to keep meta titles and meta descriptions from getting cut off in search results, which directly affects click-through rate. Anyone writing a resume, cover letter, business proposal, or SMS message can use it to stay precise and professional.
Why Character Counts Matter for SEO and Social Media
Character counts are not just a formality — they directly affect how your content is displayed and whether it gets published at all. Search engines typically truncate meta titles past 60 characters and meta descriptions past 160, replacing the tail with "..." in the results page. A well-fitted meta description is more likely to be read in full, and more likely to earn the click. On social media, every platform has its own hard limit: X (Twitter) at 280 characters, LinkedIn at 3,000, Instagram captions at 2,200, and Facebook posts at 63,206. SMS messages split at 160 characters — go over and the message is sent as two, which costs more and looks less clean. Having a live counter means you can see at a glance whether your post is safe to publish, and adjust before you commit. The built-in progress bar turns red the moment you cross the limit, so there is no guesswork.
Private, Fast, and Completely Free
This counter runs entirely inside your browser using JavaScript, so nothing you type is ever uploaded, saved, or sent to a server. It works instantly on Windows, Mac, Android, and iPhone, with no sign-up, no download, and no limit on how much text you paste in. You can use it for a single tweet or a full-length manuscript — the counts are equally fast and equally accurate. Because the text never leaves your device, it is safe for confidential drafts, legal documents, and anything you would not want to paste into a cloud service.