How to count words and characters
Type or paste your text into the box and every metric updates instantly — there is no button to press and nothing to submit. The counts cover the things writers and developers actually need: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and lines, plus an estimate of how long the text takes to read aloud or silently. Because everything runs in your browser as you type, it stays fast even for long documents, and your draft never leaves the page. It is equally at home checking an essay against a word limit, trimming a meta description to 160 characters, or sizing up a blog post.
What each metric means
The numbers look simple but the definitions matter, so here is exactly how each is computed:
- Words — runs of non-whitespace separated by spaces, tabs or newlines. Repeated spaces collapse to one separator, and leading or trailing space is ignored.
- Characters — every character including spaces and line breaks, the figure most platforms mean by a "character limit".
- Characters (no spaces) — the same count with all whitespace removed, useful for strict typographic limits.
- Sentences — segments ended by a period, question mark or exclamation mark, so abbreviations may nudge the count slightly.
- Paragraphs — blocks of text separated by one or more blank lines.
- Lines — the number of physical lines, counting every line break.
Reading and speaking time
Two time estimates help when text is meant to be consumed rather than just measured. Reading time assumes 200 words per minute, the widely cited average for silent adult reading of general prose. Speaking time assumes 130 words per minute, a comfortable presentation pace — handy for sizing a speech, a script or a video voice-over. Both are estimates: dense technical writing reads slower and a brisk speaker talks faster, but the figures give a reliable ballpark for planning.
Keyword density
The keyword panel lists the words that appear most often, with their share of the total word count. Very common stop words — "the", "and", "of", "to" and the like — are filtered out so the list reflects the words that actually carry meaning. This is a quick way to catch a term you have leaned on too heavily, to check that a target keyword appears often enough in SEO copy without stuffing, or simply to see what a piece of writing is really about at a glance.
Why count words locally
Counting is pure, deterministic text processing — the same input always yields the same numbers — which makes a real tool far more trustworthy than asking an AI assistant, which can miscount a long passage and state the wrong figure confidently. More importantly, drafts are often private: an unpublished article, a cover letter, a confidential report. Running everything in the browser means none of it is uploaded or logged, matching the gitime.dev default that your data stays on your device.
- Live — every count updates as you type.
- Complete — words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, lines.
- Time estimates — reading and speaking minutes.
- Keyword density — spot overused terms instantly.
- Local — nothing uploaded, safe for private drafts.
Frequently asked questions
- How is a word counted?
- Any run of non-whitespace separated by spaces, tabs or line breaks; repeated spaces count as one separator.
- How is reading time estimated?
- Reading time uses 200 words per minute and speaking time uses 130 words per minute — standard averages.
- What is keyword density?
- How often each word appears as a share of the total, with common stop words filtered out.
- Is my text uploaded?
- No. All counting runs locally in your browser, so it is safe for private drafts.