How to Use This Tool
Word counters are everywhere and most of them answer only the first half of the question. You rarely just want a number — you want to know whether you are over, how much is left, and how long the thing will take to read aloud. This one shows all of that at once, and it runs entirely in your browser, which matters when the text is an unpublished draft, a client document or an exam submission.
What each count actually measures
A word is a run of characters separated by whitespace. Hyphenated compounds like "self-employed" count as one, which matches how Word and Google Docs behave; numbers and standalone symbols count as words too. Characters includes every space and line break, which is the figure almost every platform limit refers to. Characters without spaces is what most academic submission systems use instead, and the gap between the two is roughly 18% of your total, which is enough to fail a limit if you check the wrong one.
Hitting a specific limit
Set a target and the progress bar appears, turning amber as you approach and red once you pass. The preset buttons cover the limits people actually run into — meta descriptions, tweets, LinkedIn's see-more fold, Google Ads headlines, UCAS personal statements. Choose whether the limit counts words or characters, because platforms disagree and getting it wrong is how a carefully written line gets truncated mid-sentence.
Reading time, speaking time and why they differ
Reading time uses 238 words per minute, the figure from Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of adult silent reading — not the 200 or 250 that most blogs use without a source. Speaking time uses 130 wpm, a realistic presentation pace including pauses. If you are writing a five-minute conference talk, aim for about 650 words, not the 1,190 that a reading-speed estimate would suggest.
The readability score
The Flesch reading ease score runs from 0 to 100, where higher is easier. Most general-audience writing should land between 60 and 70; below 30 the text is genuinely hard work. It is computed from average sentence length and average syllables per word, which means it rewards short sentences and plain vocabulary. Treat it as a smoke alarm rather than a target: a low score reliably means something is dense, but a high score does not guarantee the writing is good.