Word and Character Counter

How many words is it, exactly?

An essay capped at 1,500 words, a scholarship application with a 500-word personal statement, a short story contest that rejects anything over 3,000 words. Each time you need the exact figure, not a guess. Jood's word counter gives you the word count, the character count, the reading time and the speaking time in one go.

How to use it

1. Paste your text into the box or type it in.
2. Click "Start Now".
3. Four boxes appear: Words, Characters, Reading Time and Speaking Time.

What gets counted

• A word is any run of letters or digits between two spaces. "2026" counts as a word; a dash or a full stop standing on its own does not.
• Contractions and hyphenated words such as "don't" or "well-known" count once, because there is no space inside them.
• Characters include spaces and line breaks.
• Reading time is based on 200 words per minute and speaking time on 130 words per minute, a comfortable pace for a talk or a presentation.

You may see a small difference from Word or Google Docs, mostly in texts full of slashes ("and/or") or symbols, because every program defines a word slightly differently. If a school or publisher expects the count from a specific program, do your final check there.

Everyday uses

• Writing a three-minute speech: aim for about 390 words, and the counter tells you straight away if you have written too much.
• Writing a page's meta description: keep it to around 160 characters so Google does not cut it off.
• Checking a post before you publish it on a platform with a character limit.

To see whether your text is easy to read, run it through the readability checker. To count lines instead of words, use the line counter.

Where your text goes

The text is sent to Jood's server, counted, and the result appears on the same page. It is not stored, and you do not need an account.

FAQ