Count words, estimate pages, reading time, and analyze readability for your essay.
Paste your essay below
Start typing to see your most frequently used words (excluding common stop words).
Essay Word Counter is a free, browser-based tool that instantly measures the length of your essay as you type or paste it. It reports the total word count, character count (with and without spaces), sentence count, paragraph count, and estimated reading and speaking time, so you can hit an assignment's word limit without guesswork.
It is built for students, teachers, and academic writers working to strict requirements such as "800-1000 words" or a 5-page limit. Because it runs entirely in your browser, counting happens live with every keystroke and nothing is uploaded to a server.
The counter tokenizes your text by splitting on whitespace, so any sequence of non-space characters separated by spaces, tabs, or line breaks counts as one word. This matches how most word processors, including Microsoft Word and Google Docs, calculate word count, though numbers, hyphenated terms, and contractions each count as a single word. Sentences are estimated by counting terminal punctuation (period, question mark, exclamation point) and paragraphs by counting blocks separated by blank lines.
Page count is derived from a words-per-page assumption. A common academic default is 250 words per double-spaced page or 500 words per single-spaced page in a 12-point serif font, so a 1,500-word essay is roughly 6 double-spaced pages. Reading time uses an average silent reading speed of about 200-250 words per minute, and speaking time uses roughly 130 words per minute; a 1,000-word essay therefore takes about 4-5 minutes to read and about 8 minutes to present aloud. These are estimates because true page length depends on your exact font, margins, and spacing.
Yes, it is completely free with no sign-up. All counting happens locally in your browser using JavaScript, so your text is never uploaded, stored, or sent to any server.
In almost all cases yes, because it uses the same whitespace-based tokenization. Tiny differences can appear with unusual punctuation or symbols, but for normal essays the totals line up.
It converts your word count using a words-per-page setting, defaulting to about 250 words for a double-spaced page. Actual pages vary with your font, size, margins, and line spacing, so treat it as an estimate.
Reading time assumes an average of roughly 200-250 words per minute. Faster or slower readers will differ, and you can adjust the reading speed if your teacher specifies a particular pace.
The tool shows both figures: total characters including spaces and punctuation, and characters excluding spaces. This helps when a requirement is stated as a character limit rather than a word limit.
Yes. Select and paste just the section you want to measure, such as a single paragraph or the introduction, and the counters will report on that text alone.
Yes. The tool runs in any modern mobile or desktop browser with no installation, so you can check your word count on a phone or tablet.