Word Count & Reading Time
Paste your text for an instant word count, character count, sentence count, and estimated reading time. Updates as you type.
Paste your text for an instant word count, character count, sentence count, and estimated reading time. Updates as you type.
Reading time
at 200 words per minute
Check how many times a specific word or phrase appears in your text.
Paste or type your content into the text area. All stats update instantly as you type, no button to click. The reading time estimate assumes an average adult reading speed of 200 words per minute, which is standard for web content.
For SEO purposes, most studies put the sweet spot between 1,500 and 2,500 words for competitive topics. Short-form content (600 to 900 words) works well for news updates and simple how-to posts. Long-form content (3,000 words and above) tends to rank better for competitive keywords because it signals depth and authority to Google.
Character counts are particularly relevant for meta descriptions (aim for 150 to 160 characters), page titles (50 to 60 characters), and social media posts where platforms enforce strict limits. Twitter limits posts to 280 characters. LinkedIn recommends keeping post text under 700 characters for maximum engagement before the "see more" cut-off.
Ideal length depends on the job. News updates and announcements do their work in 300 to 600 words. Standard how-to posts land between 800 and 1,500. Competitive informational content, pages targeting keywords with real competition, typically needs 1,500 to 2,500 words to match the completeness of what already ranks. Pillar guides run 2,500 and up. The critical caveat: these ranges describe what complete coverage tends to produce, not targets to pad toward. Google's helpful content systems specifically demote padded pages, and human readers punished them first. Cover the topic fully, cut everything that isn't coverage, and let the counter show whatever's left.
Nobody consciously registers your word count, but everyone makes a two-second judgment about time commitment before deciding to read. At the standard 200 words per minute, 600 words is a 3-minute read, 1,500 words is about 7, and 2,500 is roughly 12. Displaying reading time near your title measurably improves engagement, it converts an unknown commitment into a known one, and known costs feel smaller. It's also a planning check: if your quick how-to answer has become a 15-minute read, the length itself will drive away the exact person the post was written for.
The character counts matter as much as word counts once you leave the blog post. Title tags truncate around 60 characters in Google results. Meta descriptions cut at about 160. Email subject lines display roughly 40 to 50 characters on mobile. LinkedIn folds posts at 210 characters behind "see more," and X allows 280. Different windows, one principle: know the frame you're writing into before you write, and use the live counts here to trim to fit.
The sentence and paragraph counts deserve more attention than they get. Divide words by sentences as you write, if your average creeps past 20 words per sentence, readability is slipping regardless of vocabulary. Paragraph count matters for the phone screen: a six-sentence paragraph renders as a wall on mobile, and walls end reading sessions. For anything over 1,000 words, aim for a subheading every 300 words or so and paragraphs of one to four sentences. Our guide on how long a blog post should be covers the full length-by-content-type breakdown, including how to reach a competitive length without padding.