Word Counter
Type or paste your text: words, characters, sentences and reading time update in real time.
Character limits across platforms
Every platform has its own limits: a post on X tops out at 280 characters, an Instagram caption at 2,200, a YouTube title at 100, and the ideal meta description for Google stays under 160. Keeping an eye on the count saves you from cut-off, truncated text.
How is reading time calculated?
The estimate is based on an average reading speed of 200 words per minute, the standard that blogs and online publications use to show how long an article takes to read.
What counts as a word, a sentence and a paragraph
A word is whatever sits between two spaces, so digits, acronyms and «e-mail» count as one word each: it's the same rule word processors use. A sentence ends where there's a full stop, an exclamation mark, a question mark or an ellipsis followed by a space or by the end of the text. A paragraph is a block separated from the others by a blank line: if you break the line just once, for the count it's still the same paragraph.
From this comes the only difference you really notice: abbreviations close a sentence. In a text full of «etc.», «Dr.» and «p.» the sentence count comes out higher than it should. That's the price of a simple rule, and knowing it is worth more than a number that looks exact and isn't.
Why the number may not match Word's
Two programs counting words almost always give slightly different numbers, and neither is wrong: the conventions differ on hyphens, apostrophes, numbers and symbols. If you have to respect a limit written into a contract or a call for entries, the count that matters is the one from the program used by whoever reads it. For a safety margin, stay a few words under the limit instead of hitting it exactly.
Nearby tools
For each social network's limits, with the count already set per platform, there is Social character counter. Whoever works in cartelle finds that count in Editorial pages, and for reading time alone, silent and out loud, Reading time. If the text is long and you want to know whether it's clear, the measure is How readable is a text; for the list of different words, Unique words.