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Word Counter
Count words, characters and reading time as you type, with limits for Twitter/X, Instagram bios and other platforms built in.
Word counter
Nothing typed yet — word and character counts will appear here as you go.
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Character counter
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Reading time assumes 200 words a minute; speaking time assumes 130 — both are estimates, not a measurement of this text.
Character limits for social posts and more
Twitter character counter
280 left
280 characters left of 280
Instagram bio character limit checker
150 left
150 characters left of 150
Instagram caption
2200 left
2200 characters left of 2200
Meta description
160 left
160 characters left of 160
LinkedIn headline
220 left
220 characters left of 220
SMS (single segment)
160 left
160 characters left of 160
Paste or type into the box above and every figure updates as you go: words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, an estimated reading and speaking time, and how much room is left against six limits people actually run into — an X/Twitter post, an Instagram bio or caption, a meta description, a LinkedIn headline and a single SMS segment. Nothing you type leaves this browser; see "Does this word counter save or upload what I type?" below for exactly what that promise does and doesn't cover.
How this tool counts a word
There is no single agreed definition of "word," so this section states the one this tool uses rather than leaving it for you to guess from a number that disagrees with some other counter. A word here is a run of letters or numbers, optionally chained to another such run by a single hyphen or apostrophe — which means "don't" counts as one word, "well-known" counts as one word, and "100" counts as one word on its own. What it deliberately does not join: an em dash typed with no spaces around it ("finished—finally") is treated as a boundary between two words rather than a compound, because it usually joins two independent clauses rather than forming one word, and the same goes for a double hyphen used as a makeshift em dash ("finished--finally"). The one honest limitation worth stating plainly: languages written without spaces between words, such as Chinese, Japanese or Thai, have no boundary for this rule to find, so a whole sentence in one of those scripts counts as a single "word" here — which is exactly why the character count sits right beside it, since for those scripts characters are the number that actually means something.
Character counter: characters with and without spaces
"Characters" sounds like it should be unambiguous, and for plain English text
it mostly is — but "👋".length in JavaScript is 2, not 1, because a single
emoji is often built from more than one underlying code unit, and the same is
true of many accented letters and most non-Latin scripts. This tool counts
what a reader would call one visible character as one character, using the
same grapheme-cluster logic that a modern browser uses to place a cursor, so
an emoji, an accented letter and a character from a script like Devanagari or
Arabic each count as one rather than two or three. Two figures are shown side
by side: the total including spaces, and the count with spaces removed — the
second is the number most closely tracked by print word-rate estimates and by
some of the platform limits below.
Reading time calculator: how many words is a 5 minute speech
Reading and speaking time are both estimates built on a stated words-per-minute assumption, shown next to the figure rather than presented as a fact about your specific text: 200 words a minute for silent reading, and 130 words a minute for a spoken, prepared delivery. At the speaking rate, a 5-minute speech runs to roughly 650 words; a 2-minute reading of the same draft would need closer to 400 words at the reading rate. Both numbers move the moment you add or cut a paragraph, which is the point — use them while drafting to a length, then do one read-aloud pass with a stopwatch for anything time-sensitive, since no word count can account for how fast you personally talk.
Twitter character counter: the 280-character limit
X (formerly Twitter) currently caps a single post at 280 characters for most accounts, and this tool's "X / Twitter post" card counts down from that limit as you type, switching to an over-limit state the moment you cross it. The one honest caveat: X's own counter uses a "weighted length" that treats some non-Latin scripts and certain emoji more strictly than a plain character count, and a link is always counted as a fixed length regardless of the URL's real length — so for plain English text with no links, this figure matches X's own count; for a post mixing scripts or carrying several links, treat it as a close approximation and check the exact number in X's own composer before posting right at the edge.
Instagram bio character limit checker
Instagram enforces a hard 150-character limit on the bio field and simply won't let you save anything past it, unlike a caption, which gets cut off with a "more" link instead of being blocked outright. The bio limit counts every character including spaces and emoji, and it's separate from the much longer caption limit (2,200 characters) tracked in its own card here. If you're drafting a bio, paste it into the box above and watch the count drop toward zero rather than guessing at how much room is left.
Meta descriptions, LinkedIn headlines and SMS limits
Three more limits worth checking before you paste text somewhere it can be cut off or rejected outright. A meta description is generally shown up to around 160 characters before a search result truncates it, so this tool tracks that figure as the practical cap even though there's no hard technical limit on the field itself. A LinkedIn headline is capped at 220 characters by the platform. An SMS text message holds 160 characters per segment using the plain GSM-7 character set — add a single emoji or a non-Latin letter and the whole message drops to a 70-character-per-segment limit, after which most phones silently split it into multiple linked messages rather than refusing to send it.
Questions
- How many words is a 5 minute speech?
- At the widely used speaking-rate assumption of 130 words a minute for a prepared, spoken-aloud delivery, a 5-minute speech runs to roughly 650 words — 5 multiplied by 130. That is an estimate, not a guarantee: a speaker who pauses for effect, takes questions mid-flow, or simply talks faster or slower than average will land somewhere else. The safest way to use it is as a target while drafting, then read the speech aloud once with a stopwatch and adjust from there — this tool can only estimate from a words-per-minute assumption, not from how you personally deliver a line.
- What is the Instagram bio character limit?
- 150 characters, and Instagram enforces it strictly — the app simply won't let you save a bio past that point, rather than silently truncating it later. That figure counts every character in the bio field, including spaces, emoji and line breaks, and it's separate from the caption limit (2,200 characters) and from the display name field above it, which has its own, shorter cap. Paste your draft bio into the box above and watch the 'Instagram bio' card under Character limits — it counts down as you type and switches to an over-limit state the moment you pass 150.
- How many characters can I put in a post on X (Twitter)?
- 280 characters for most accounts, counting every character including spaces and most punctuation. This tool's count is a close approximation rather than an exact match to X's own counter: X uses a 'weighted length' that treats characters from some non-Latin scripts and certain emoji differently than a plain character count would, and a link is always counted as a fixed length regardless of how long the actual URL is. For ordinary English-language text with no links, the two numbers line up; for text mixing scripts or containing several links, treat the figure here as a close estimate and confirm the exact count in X's own composer before posting something right at the edge.
- Does this word counter save or upload what I type?
- No. Every count on this page is computed inside your own browser from the text in the box, and nothing you type or paste is ever sent anywhere, saved to an account, or written to this device's storage between visits. Closing the tab, reloading the page, or navigating away clears it completely, the same as a plain text box with no JavaScript at all — which is deliberate, since the kind of text people paste into a word counter (an unpublished draft, a message about someone else, a cover letter) is exactly the kind of text a visitor would not want quietly waiting for them, or anyone else on a shared computer, on a later visit.
- Why does my word count not match another counter's number?
- Because 'word' is not a single, universally agreed definition, and every counting tool has to pick a convention. This tool counts a word as a run of letters or numbers, optionally joined into one word by a single hyphen or apostrophe — so "don't" and "well-known" each count as one word, while an em dash used as punctuation between two clauses with no surrounding spaces ("finished—finally") counts as two. A tool that instead splits on every space character alone would count differently on hyphenated or dashed text, and neither convention is more correct than the other. See 'How this tool counts a word' below for the full rule and its known limits.
- How many characters can I fit in one SMS text message?
- 160 characters for a single message segment using the standard GSM-7 character set — the character set that covers plain English letters, digits and common punctuation. The moment a message contains a character outside that set, most commonly an emoji or a letter from a non-Latin script, the whole message switches to a 16-bit encoding and the limit per segment drops to 70 characters. Go over either limit and most phones and carriers don't refuse to send the message — they silently split it into multiple concatenated segments, which can multiply the cost on a pay-per-segment plan without any warning in the compose screen.