Count words and characters instantly

Paste your text and PocketSpry calculates the metrics right in your browser — no sign-up, no upload, and no waiting on a server.

What the counter measures

It reports words, characters (with spaces), characters without whitespace, an estimated sentence count, paragraphs, logical lines, and an estimated reading time.

Characters and Unicode

Character counting is Unicode-aware where your browser supports it, so emoji and non-Latin text are handled more naturally than raw JavaScript string length — a family emoji counts as one character, not a string of code units.

What counts as a word?

PocketSpry uses your browser’s language-aware word segmentation where supported, with a Unicode-aware fallback otherwise. Standalone punctuation is not counted as a word.

Sentence count is an estimate

Sentence boundaries depend on punctuation and language, so abbreviations, decimals, and unusual punctuation can shift the count. Treat the sentence count as an estimate, not an exact figure.

Reading-time estimate

Reading time uses roughly 200 words per minute. Actual reading speed varies by reader and material, so this is an estimate rather than a measurement of any particular person’s pace.

Private and browser-local

Your text is processed locally in your browser. It is not sent to PocketSpry’s AI service, and your text and counts are not sent to analytics.

Good uses

Check the length of essays, articles, bios, application answers, social posts, and professional messages, or confirm you are within a form’s character limit.

Frequently asked questions

What does Word & Character Counter count?: Words, characters with spaces, characters without whitespace, estimated sentences, paragraphs, logical lines, and estimated reading time.
Does it count spaces?: Yes. The character count includes spaces; a separate count excludes whitespace.
Does it show characters without spaces?: Yes, as a separate “Characters without whitespace” figure.
How does it count emoji?: Where your browser supports Unicode segmentation, an emoji — including combined family/ZWJ emoji — counts as a single character rather than several code units.
Does it support Unicode text?: Yes, including accented Latin, non-Latin scripts, and right-to-left text.
What counts as a word?: A word-like token from your browser’s language-aware segmentation; standalone punctuation is not a word.
Why might its word count differ from Microsoft Word or Google Docs?: Different tools tokenize words and handle hyphens, punctuation, and symbols slightly differently, so small differences are normal. PocketSpry does not claim to match any specific word processor exactly.
How are sentences counted?: By estimating sentence boundaries from punctuation and language rules.
Is sentence count exact?: No. It is an estimate; abbreviations and unusual punctuation can affect it.
How are paragraphs counted?: As non-empty blocks of text separated by one or more blank lines.
How are lines counted?: By newline boundaries in the text; a value with no line break is one line.
Does wrapping create extra lines?: No. Visual wrapping in the text box does not add logical lines — only actual line breaks do.
How is reading time estimated?: From the word count at roughly 200 words per minute.
What reading speed does it use?: Approximately 200 words per minute; there is no reading-speed control in this version.
Is my text sent to AI?: No. This tool does not use AI and makes no server or AI call.
Does my text leave my browser?: No. The text is processed locally in your browser.
Does PocketSpry send my text or counts to Plausible?: No. Your text and the resulting counts are not sent to analytics.
What is the maximum input size?: Up to 100,000 characters.
Is the result AI generated?: No. The counts are computed deterministically in your browser.