Why is the reading time so short / so long?

Reading speed varies with content. Brysbaert’s 2019 meta-analysis sets the adult silent-reading mean at ~238 wpm for fiction and ~200 wpm for non-fiction. We default to 250 because most online articles aim slightly above that. Pick a slower WPM for technical content or audiobook narration.

How accurate is the Flesch reading ease estimate?

It is approximate. Strict Flesch needs an exact syllable count per word; this tool uses average word length as a proxy. Treat it as a sanity check, not a publication-grade number. For exact Flesch use a dedicated readability checker.

Does my text leave the browser?

No. All counting is done client-side in JavaScript. The text never reaches our server.

How are sentences counted?

By searching for runs ending in . ! or ?. Abbreviations like "Dr. Smith" cause one false positive; that is the standard limitation of regex-based sentence segmentation. For very accurate counts on academic-style prose use a NLP-aware tool.

Why is the reading time so short / so long?

Reading speed varies with content. Brysbaert’s 2019 meta-analysis sets the adult silent-reading mean at ~238 wpm for fiction and ~200 wpm for non-fiction. We default to 250 because most online articles aim slightly above that. Pick a slower WPM for technical content or audiobook narration.

How accurate is the Flesch reading ease estimate?

It is approximate. Strict Flesch needs an exact syllable count per word; this tool uses average word length as a proxy. Treat it as a sanity check, not a publication-grade number. For exact Flesch use a dedicated readability checker.

Does my text leave the browser?

No. All counting is done client-side in JavaScript. The text never reaches our server.

How are sentences counted?

By searching for runs ending in . ! or ?. Abbreviations like "Dr. Smith" cause one false positive; that is the standard limitation of regex-based sentence segmentation. For very accurate counts on academic-style prose use a NLP-aware tool.

Word Count + Reading Time

Count words, characters, paragraphs, and sentences in any pasted text, plus reading time at 250 / 200 / 150 WPM.

Result

19 words

Reading time ≈ 5s at 250 wpm

Words19
Characters (incl. spaces)100
Characters (no spaces)82
Sentences2
Paragraphs1
Lines1
Avg word length4.32 chars
Avg sentence length9.50 words
Flesch reading ease (approx.)Difficult (college / scientific)14.6

Source: Brysbaert M (2019) "How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate" — Journal of Memory and Language 109:104047.

Note — Reading speed varies a lot by content type (technical prose < narrative < skimming). 250 wpm is the silent-reading adult mean per Brysbaert 2019; use the slider for non-default contexts.

Step-by-step

Tokenise on whitespace, keep tokens that contain at least one letter or digit.
Sentences ≈ count of [.!?] terminators; paragraphs ≈ runs separated by blank lines.
Reading time = words ÷ wpm. 19 ÷ 250 = 0.076 min ≈ 5s.

How to use this calculator

Paste any text into the box.
Read the headline word count and the estimated reading time.
Adjust the WPM slider for the audience: ~250 silent reading, ~150 for audiobook narration, ~400 for speed-scanning.
Use the per-statistic breakdown for editorial-target verification (SEO copy, Twitter limits, etc.).

About this calculator

Editors and writers reach for a word-counter dozens of times a day — for assignment limits, SEO targets (Google recommends ~1,500-word long-form content), social-media size caps, and reading-time labels. This tool gives you the full suite at once: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, lines, and reading time at a configurable WPM. The Flesch reading-ease estimate is a rough hint at audience accessibility — proper Flesch needs an exact syllable count which is approximated here from average word length.

How it works — the formula

words = |{ tokens by whitespace where token contains letter or digit }|
reading_time = words / wpm  (min)
flesch ≈ 206.835 − 1.015·(words/sentences) − 84.6·(syllables/words)

Word counting is straightforward tokenisation; the interesting numbers are derived. Reading time uses a published mean WPM (Brysbaert 2019). Flesch is a 1948 readability formula still widely used; it requires syllables which are approximated here.

Sources: Brysbaert (2019) — Reading rate meta-analysis (JML 109:104047) · Flesch R (1948) — A new readability yardstick (J Appl Psychol 32:221) · Microsoft Word — Word count documentation

Worked examples

Example 1

Twitter post (≤280 char)

Inputs:: 20 words, 130 chars
Output:: ~5s read at 250 wpm

Example 2

Email (default)

Inputs:: 200 words
Output:: ~48s at 250 wpm

Example 3

Blog article

Inputs:: 1500 words
Output:: ~6 min at 250 wpm

Limitations

Sentence detection is regex-based — abbreviations (Dr., U.S., etc.) can split a sentence wrongly.
Flesch estimate uses average word length as a syllable proxy; not publication-grade.
Word definition matches Microsoft Word convention; specialist counts (CJK character count, etc.) need a dedicated tool.

All counting runs entirely in your browser — no text is uploaded or stored.

Frequently asked

Any whitespace-separated token that contains at least one letter or digit. Pure-punctuation tokens (a bare "—" between words, for instance) are not counted. This matches the convention used by Microsoft Word and Google Docs.