Count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs as you type, with estimated reading and speaking time. Everything happens in your browser — your text is never uploaded or stored anywhere.
Where the reading time figures come from
Reading time uses 238 words per minute, which is a widely cited average for adults reading silently. Speaking time uses 140, a comfortable pace for presenting aloud without rushing.
Both are averages and both move with the material. Dense technical writing is read considerably slower than narrative prose, and an audience unfamiliar with your subject needs more time than these figures suggest. Treat them as planning estimates.
Common length targets
- Meta description: around 155 characters before truncation.
- Page title: around 60 characters.
- Blog post: depends entirely on the topic. Length is not a ranking factor in itself, and padding to hit a number actively hurts.
- Conference talk: roughly 140 words per minute, so a 20-minute slot is about 2,800 words of script.
- University essay: most institutions allow a 10% margin either side of the stated count.
Average sentence length matters more than total words
The tool reports sentence count so you can work out your average. It is one of the most reliable readability signals available without specialist software.
Sentences averaging over 25 words become noticeably harder to follow. Varying the length matters too: a run of similar-length sentences reads monotonously regardless of whether they are short or long. Mixing a very short sentence into a passage of longer ones is one of the simplest ways to control pace.
If you are checking length for search results specifically, the SERP snippet preview shows exactly where Google will cut your title and description.