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Free Word Counter

Paste any text. Counts, reading and speaking time, Flesch readability and keyword density across one, two and three-word phrases.

What a run costs
One free run a day, no account needed
How it runs
Straight away
Who it is for
Free: 3 a day. Every paid plan: unlimited.

A free account raises the daily allowance and keeps your results. Create one — no card needed.

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Overview

A word counter that only counts words leaves out the numbers that decide whether a draft is finished. This one returns the four counts (words, characters, sentences, paragraphs), reading time at 200 words a minute and speaking time at 130, the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid grade, and keyword density across single words, two-word phrases and three-word phrases.

What The Readability Scores Mean

Flesch Reading Ease runs from 0 to 100 and higher is easier: above 60 is comfortable for a general audience, 30 to 60 reads as college level, below 30 is academic. Flesch-Kincaid turns the same arithmetic into a school grade. Both are published formulas over average sentence length and average syllables per word, calibrated on English. Paste something that is not English and this tool withholds the score instead of printing a number that means nothing.

What Keyword Density Is For

Density is the share of the text a phrase accounts for. It is worth looking at because a phrase you have leaned on shows up immediately, and it is not worth optimising because there is no density that ranks. Stop words are excluded from the single-word table so the phrases you see are the ones you chose. A run takes a paste of up to 200,000 characters, and one run is one use.

About the tool

What Is The SBMM Word Counter?

The SBMM Word Counter counts the words, characters, sentences and paragraphs in any text you paste, and adds the numbers a word count alone does not give you: reading time, speaking time, Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid grade level, and keyword density across one, two and three-word phrases.

A useful word counter serves several different jobs from the same paste. A writer checking a brief wants the word count. A student wants it against a target. A marketer wants the character count a meta description or an ad is limited to. An SEO wants the density table. A speaker wants the speaking time. All of them are on one screen here rather than behind a tab each.

The readability scores translate the prose into a school grade so you can tell whether the draft matches its audience: most blog writing reads best around the eighth to ninth grade, technical and B2B writing runs higher, and consumer copy should sit lower. The density tables flag a phrase you have leaned on, which is the cheapest thing to fix in a draft that reads as repetitive.

Step by step

How To Use This Tool In 3 Steps

  1. Paste Your Text

    Drop in a draft, a brief, an email, a script or any page copy, up to 200,000 characters in one run. The text is sent to our server, counted, and the result is kept with your run history if you are signed in.

  2. Read The Counts And The Readability

    Words, characters, sentences and paragraphs, then reading time at 200 words a minute and speaking time at 130. Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid grade follow, along with the average sentence length and syllables per word they are computed from.

  3. Switch The Density Tabs

    One-word, two-word and three-word tabs show the fifteen most frequent phrases with the share of the text each accounts for. Stop words are left out of the single-word table so what you see is the vocabulary you chose.

Why this tool

Why Use This Tool

  • Words, Characters, Sentences, Paragraphs

    The four core counts, with characters reported both with and without spaces. The count with spaces is the one a meta description, a post or an ad field limits you to; the count without is what some style guides ask for.

  • Reading And Speaking Time

    Reading time at 200 words a minute, the usual figure for English prose, and speaking time at 130, the usual figure for a presentation. Both rates are stated rather than hidden, because reading speed is a choice of constant, not a fact.

  • Flesch And Grade Level, For English

    Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid grade, from the published formulas. Paste text that is not mostly Latin script and the tool says so and withholds the score, rather than counting English syllables in a language that does not have them.

  • Density Across One, Two And Three Words

    The top fifteen phrases at each length, with the count and the share of the text. Two and three-word phrases are only reported once they repeat, so the table is phrases you used again rather than every pair of words in the draft.

  • No Invented Score

    Every number here is a count or a published formula over counts. There is no SBMM readability grade, no content score and no ideal density: there is no keyword density that ranks, and a tool that prints a target is selling one.

  • One Free Run A Day

    One run a day without an account. A free account gives three runs a day of this tool and keeps your results. Paid plans raise the allowance.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

How does the word counter define a word?

It splits on runs of whitespace and counts every non-empty piece. An apostrophe keeps a contraction as one word, a hyphenated term is one word, and a URL or an email address is one word. That is the same definition a word processor uses, so the number matches the one your editor shows.

What counts as a sentence?

A run of text ending in a full stop, exclamation mark or question mark. An abbreviation like "Dr." can add one to the count; at any realistic length the effect on the readability scores is too small to change the grade.

What is Flesch Reading Ease?

A score from 0 to 100 where higher is easier, computed from the average sentence length and the average syllables per word. Above 60 is comfortable for a general audience, 30 to 60 reads as college level, and below 30 reads as academic.

What is the Flesch-Kincaid grade level?

The same two measurements expressed as a US school grade. A grade of 8.0 means an average eighth-grader can read the text comfortably. Most consumer writing lands best between grades 7 and 9.

Why does it refuse to score my Urdu, Arabic or Chinese text?

Because the score would be meaningless. Flesch estimates syllables from English spelling patterns, so on a language it cannot read it returns a confident number with nothing behind it. The counts, the reading time and the density tables all still work: only the two readability scores are withheld.

How is keyword density calculated?

For each phrase, the number of times it occurs divided by the total number of words, as a percentage. Stop words are excluded from the single-word table. There is no density to aim for; the table is for spotting a phrase you have repeated more than you meant to. To see how a live page reads as a whole, run the On-Page Audit.

Is my text stored?

Yes, while the run lasts and afterwards as your result. This is a server tool, not a browser one: the text is sent to us, counted, and the result is kept so your run history works. Signed-in results are deleted on the retention schedule, and an anonymous run is not attached to any account. If a draft is confidential enough that this matters, count it locally instead.

Why is the reading time different from another word counter?

Because the constant differs. We use 200 words a minute, the usual published figure for English prose. Some tools use 250, which suits a fast reader, and some use 180. None of them is wrong; the number is only as meaningful as the rate it assumes, which is why ours is printed next to it.