Character Counter

Frequently Asked Questions

How is reading time calculated?

At 200 words per minute, the average adult silent-reading speed. For technical material you can halve that (100 wpm); for light fiction you can roughly double it (400 wpm). The figure shown always uses 200 wpm, so tune your expectation to your content.

Does it count spaces as characters?

Yes. The Characters stat includes spaces, punctuation and line breaks, which is how Twitter, SMS and every CMS count them. The No Spaces stat is there when you want a pure letter-and-digit count, for typing-speed tests or for a platform that documents its limit as "characters excluding whitespace".

Why does my SMS count more than 160 characters with an emoji?

SMS has two encoding modes. GSM-7 (basic Latin letters, digits, common punctuation) gives you 160 characters per message. As soon as you include an emoji, an accented character, or any non-GSM-7 symbol, the phone switches to UCS-2 encoding, which supports every Unicode character but cuts the per-message limit to 70. This is why a single emoji turns a short SMS into two messages.

What counts as a word?

Any sequence of non-whitespace characters, split by any Unicode whitespace (spaces, tabs, line breaks). Punctuation attached to a word ("don't", "U.S.A.") counts as one word; numbers count as words; a lone punctuation mark (".") does not. This matches the Word / Google Docs word-count convention.

Is my text stored anywhere?

No. The tool is a client-only JavaScript app, so the text you paste is processed locally and discarded when you leave the tab. There is no backend, no logging, and no analytics tied to your content. Your browser's DevTools Network tab will show no outbound request for the text you enter.