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Word Counter
Word Counter shows live counts of words, characters and non-empty lines as you type or paste — the quickest way to hit an exact limit for an essay, an application form or a meta description.
How to use Word Counter
- Paste or type your text into the editor.
- Watch the word, character and line counters update as you edit.
- Copy the finished text into the place you need it.
Where Word Counter is useful
- Checking an essay against a word limit before submitting.
- Fitting a meta description into roughly 155 characters.
- Counting the lines of a list or a short script.
- Keeping a social post inside a character budget.
Formats, algorithms and limits
Words are counted by splitting on runs of whitespace, characters count every character including spaces and punctuation, and the line count ignores blank lines. That means markup, emoji and code syntax all count as characters, and two words joined by a hyphen or an em-dash count as one — the usual reason this total can differ slightly from a word processor's.
Troubleshooting and honest limits
- Paste only the body text, not the headings or notes around it, when a limit applies to the body alone.
- Check the character counter as well when a form counts characters rather than words.
- If your count must match a specific system, verify with that system's own counter before submitting.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my count different from Microsoft Word?
Word treats hyphenated compounds and some punctuation differently. Both are counting the same text; the difference is the definition at the edges.
Do blank lines count as lines?
No. Only lines with at least one character are counted, so double spacing will not inflate the figure.
Is my text uploaded to count it?
No. Counting happens in real time in the browser and the text never leaves your device.
Can I count a whole file?
Paste its text into the editor, or use the Word to PDF and document tools if you need to convert the file itself.
Related tools
Page written and reviewed by the FreeConvertio engineering team on 2026-10-14. Word Counter runs entirely in your browser — no uploads, no account and no daily limits.