Word Counter
Live character, word and paragraph counts plus platform length budgets as you type.
Journals want a word minimum, posts cut off at 280 characters, SEO titles truncate past 60, and a CJK SMS splits into two at 70 characters — how much you can write is never up to you. This tool puts every budget in one view: type on the left, see characters, words, sentences and reading time on the right, with each platform's remaining allowance as a progress bar.
Words in mixed text mean two things: Latin words separated by spaces, CJK characters counted one by one. The convention here — Latin tokens plus CJK characters — matches mainstream document editors, so mixed-language text stays sensible. Everything computes as you type, locally, with the text never leaving the browser.
Characters or words — which one matters?
Follow the platform rule: posts, SMS and SEO titles limit characters; journals and assignments ask for words. English character counts run about five per word, while for Chinese the two are nearly equal. Both numbers are shown side by side, plus a "no spaces" character count for the typesetting convention.
Platform budgets are approximate on purpose
The 280-character post rule is special: URLs count as 23 and CJK characters as 2. This tool reports raw character counts as a reference — good enough for drafting, with the platform's own counter authoritative at the margin. SMS uses the more conservative 70-character UCS-2 budget, which is what mixed CJK actually gets.
Frequently asked questions
- Is my text uploaded?
- No. All statistics run locally in the browser with no backend, and the page works offline. Drafts in progress can sit here safely.
- How accurate is the count for mixed text?
- The convention is Latin words + CJK characters, matching Word and most editors. Edge cases (hyphenated compounds, full-width digits) may drift by ±1 — irrelevant for reference purposes.
- How is reading time computed?
- At 200 words per minute, rounded to 0.1 minutes — the commonly cited silent-reading average. Chinese reads somewhat faster; the figure is an order-of-magnitude guide.