liminfoWord Counter
Free web tool: Word Counter
Characters (with spaces)
0
Characters (no spaces)
0
Words
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Sentences
0
Paragraphs
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Bytes
0
About Word Counter
The Word Counter provides six real-time text statistics the moment you start typing or paste content: characters with spaces, characters without spaces, word count, sentence count, paragraph count, and byte size. All six stats update instantly as you type — there is no submit button needed. This makes it ideal for checking text against character limits in social media posts, SMS messages, form fields, and API payloads.
Writers use word counters to track progress toward word count targets in essays, articles, and manuscripts. Content marketers check character counts to ensure headlines and meta descriptions fit within SEO recommendations (typically 60 characters for titles, 155–160 for descriptions). Developers check byte sizes when encoding data or working with UTF-8 strings where multi-byte characters like Korean, Japanese, and Chinese consume 3 bytes per character rather than 1.
Technically, the tool uses the JavaScript String.length property for character counts, a whitespace-split regex (/\s+/) for word counting, a punctuation-split regex for sentences (splitting on . ! ? and the Japanese period 。), and a blank-line-split regex for paragraphs. Byte size is calculated using the TextEncoder API, which returns the UTF-8 byte length of the string. All processing happens entirely in your browser on every keystroke with no debouncing delay.
Key Features
- Characters with spaces — total length including all whitespace
- Characters without spaces — counts only non-whitespace characters
- Word count — splits on whitespace to count discrete words
- Sentence count — splits on . ! ? and Japanese period 。
- Paragraph count — counts blocks separated by blank lines
- UTF-8 byte size — useful for multi-byte character encoding checks
- Real-time updates on every keystroke with zero delay
- 100% client-side — text never leaves your browser
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Word Counter tool?
It is a free browser-based tool that analyzes any text you paste or type and displays six statistics simultaneously: character count with spaces, character count without spaces, word count, sentence count, paragraph count, and byte size. All counts update in real time as you type.
What is the difference between characters with and without spaces?
Characters with spaces counts every character in the text including all spaces, tabs, and line breaks. Characters without spaces excludes all whitespace characters. For example, "Hello World" has 11 characters with spaces and 10 without.
How does the tool count words?
Words are counted by trimming leading and trailing whitespace from the text, then splitting on one or more consecutive whitespace characters. Each resulting non-empty segment is counted as a word. For example, "Hello World" (two spaces) counts as 2 words.
How does the tool count sentences?
Sentences are counted by splitting the text on sentence-ending punctuation: period (.), exclamation mark (!), question mark (?), and the Japanese period (。). Each resulting non-empty segment is counted as a sentence. Note that abbreviations like "Dr." or "U.S." may be counted as sentence boundaries.
How does the tool count paragraphs?
Paragraphs are counted by splitting the text on blank lines — two or more consecutive newline characters. Each resulting non-empty block of text is counted as a paragraph. Single line breaks within a block do not create new paragraphs.
Why does the byte count differ from the character count?
The byte count reflects UTF-8 encoding, where different characters take different amounts of storage. ASCII characters (standard English letters and numbers) use 1 byte each. Korean, Japanese, and Chinese characters typically use 3 bytes each in UTF-8. Emoji can use 4 bytes. This is important when working with databases, APIs, or systems with byte-based limits.
What character limit does Twitter/X, Instagram, or LinkedIn use?
Twitter/X allows 280 characters per tweet. Instagram captions allow up to 2,200 characters. LinkedIn posts allow up to 3,000 characters. Use the "Characters with spaces" stat to check against these limits.
Is there a maximum text length this tool can handle?
There is no enforced limit — the tool can handle very long texts since all processing happens locally in your browser. Performance depends on your device, but modern browsers handle hundreds of thousands of characters without issues.