Citare Tools · Free
Word Counter
Paste any text — instant word, character (with + without spaces), sentence, paragraph, and syllable counts. Plus reading time, speaking time, and Flesch Reading Ease score with grade-level band.
Free. No signup. 100% client-side — nothing sent to the server.
Everything is computed locally in your browser. Nothing is sent to the server.
Frequently asked
Is my text sent to a server?
No. Everything is computed locally in your browser using JavaScript. Nothing is sent to Citare or any third party. You can fully use this tool offline once the page is loaded. The page itself is statically generated — no per-request API call for word counting.
What does the Flesch Reading Ease score mean?
A 0-100 score estimating how easy your text is to read. Higher = easier. 90+ is 5th-grade level; 60-70 is plain English (where most blog and marketing content should sit); 30-50 is college level; <30 is very hard (academic / legal). The formula is 206.835 − 1.015 × (words/sentence) − 84.6 × (syllables/word). For SEO + marketing content, aim for 60-70. For Citare's blog target band, 65-75 is the sweet spot.
How is reading time calculated?
Words ÷ 238 words per minute (the widely-cited median adult reading speed for English prose). Speaking time uses 150 wpm (typical conversational pace, slower than reading). Both are point estimates — actual reading time varies widely with text complexity, reader familiarity with the topic, and skimming patterns. Use as a rough planning number for content length decisions, not as a UX guarantee.
What counts as a sentence?
Any chunk of text separated by . ! or ? — common punctuation rules. Edge cases: ellipses count as one sentence break, multiple ! count as one break, abbreviations like "Dr." or "e.g." can cause a slight overcount. For most prose the count is within ±1 of what an editor would mark.
Why is the syllable count an approximation?
Computing exact syllables for arbitrary English words requires a pronunciation dictionary (which we'd have to load over the network — defeats the local-only philosophy). We use the standard heuristic: count vowel groups (a, e, i, o, u, y patterns), apply a few suffix rules (-es, -ed, -e endings), with a minimum of 1 per word. Accurate to within 5-10% for typical prose, which is more than enough for Flesch scoring (the rounding errors wash out across hundreds of words).
Does this work for non-English text?
Word + character + sentence counts work for any language with space-separated words and standard punctuation. Flesch Reading Ease + reading-time numbers are calibrated for English specifically — they'll produce a number for other languages but the band interpretation won't be accurate. For prose in romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese), the Flesch score tends to over-report difficulty by ~10 points.