Skip to content
Edit & Text

PDF word count — words and characters in a PDF

Get a PDF’s word count, characters (with and without spaces), sentences, pages and reading time — for an essay limit, a quote or a manuscript. Counted in your browser, with a per-page CSV.

PDF Word Count

Settings appear once you add a PDF.

Leave out a title page, references or appendices.

Ctrl + Enter runs it ·

Bytes sent anywhere: 0 B

Keyboard shortcuts

Ctrl K
Search all tools
Ctrl V
Paste files to add them
Ctrl Enter
Run the tool
?
Show this list
Esc
Close this list or the search
  • 100% private Your PDFs never leave this device. Everything runs in your browser.
  • No limits No file-size cap, no watermark, no sign-up and no daily quota. Free.
  • Batch ready Add as many PDFs as you like; each one is handled and saved in one go.

How to count the words in a PDF

  1. Add your PDFs: Drop the PDF, or several. Each one is read page by page in your browser.

  2. Check the settings: To match a limit that excludes the title page or references, type just the pages that count.

  3. Save the result: Read the totals on screen, or save the CSV with every page’s words, characters and sentences for a spreadsheet.

Why it doesn’t upload

If you’re counting words, the PDF usually isn’t public yet: an essay before you hand it in, a manuscript before it goes to an agent, a document you’ve been asked to quote a translation for. Nobody else needs a copy just to count the words, so nothing is sent anywhere.

Check it in your browser’s Network tab

Worth knowing

  • Only real text is counted. A scanned page is a picture of words and counts as nearly zero — the tool says when a file looks scanned.
  • Everything on the page counts: headers, footers, page numbers, captions and footnotes. For a count that excludes them, count the body pages only, or remove them first.
  • Words are split by the browser’s own word breaker, so “don’t” is one word and a dash is none. Other counters differ by a few percent on hyphenated words and numbers, as they do from each other.
  • Characters are counted as letters and symbols the way people see them; line breaks between pages are not counted.
  • Reading time assumes 238 words a minute, the average silent reading speed for non-fiction found by Brysbaert (2019).

Under the hood

What happens to your file

Text comes from pdf.js page by page, rejoined into paragraphs, and words are counted with Intl.Segmenter — the browser’s own Unicode word breaker (UAX #29) — so contractions count once, punctuation not at all, and languages written without spaces are still split into words.

Runs on pdf.jsIntl.Segmenter

Reference: pdf.js, Mozilla · Unicode UAX #29, Text Segmentation

Why count the words in a PDF?

Essay limits, translation quotes and manuscript submissions all come down to a word count, and a PDF won’t tell you one. This tool counts the words, the characters with and without spaces, the sentences and the pages. It also gives you a reading time and a page-by-page CSV.

The counting happens in your browser, so an unpublished essay or manuscript never gets uploaded.

Common reasons to check a PDF’s word count

  • Essay and assignment limits

    Make sure your submission is under the word limit before you hand it in.

  • Translation quotes

    Count the words so you can price a translation job.

  • Manuscript submissions

    Publishers and agents will ask for the word count.

  • Character limits

    Check the character count for a form or an application.

  • Reading time

    Get a rough idea of how long a document takes to read.

Tips for an accurate PDF word count

  1. Count only the body pages if you want to leave out the title page and references.
  2. Headers, footers and footnotes all get counted, so leave out those pages if they shouldn’t be.
  3. A scanned PDF counts as almost nothing, because there’s no text in it. Run it through OCR first.
  4. Your count can be a few percent off from Word’s, mostly because of hyphenated words and numbers.
  5. Want the count for each page? Download the CSV.

Questions

How do I check the word count of a PDF?

Drop the PDF here and press Count words. The total appears straight away, with characters, sentences, pages and an estimated reading time. There is no account and no limit on length.

Does the count include spaces?

Both are given: Characters includes spaces, Without spaces does not. Translation agencies and publishers ask for one or the other, so check which your brief uses.

How do I leave out the title page and references?

Type the pages to count, like 2-24, before you press the button. Only those pages go into the totals and the CSV.

Why is the word count different from Microsoft Word?

Usually by a few percent, for two reasons: the PDF includes things Word may leave out of its count (headers, footers, footnotes, page numbers), and counters disagree on hyphenated words and numbers. For an exact match to a Word limit, count the original Word file.

Can it count words in Chinese, Japanese or Thai?

Yes. Those languages are written without spaces, so splitting on spaces would count a whole sentence as one word. The browser’s own word breaker is used instead, which knows where the words are.

More edit & text tools

All edit & text tools