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PDF word count — words and characters in a PDF

Drop a PDF and get its word count, character count (with and without spaces), sentences, pages and reading time — for an essay limit, a translation quote or a manuscript. Every page is counted in your browser, and a page-by-page breakdown saves as a CSV.

Settings appear once you add a PDF.

Leave out a title page, references or appendices.

Done on your device No upload, no queue, no sign-up.

Bytes sent anywhere: 0 B

How to count the words in a PDF

Your PDF goes into this browser tab, is counted word by word on your device, and comes back as its totals and a page-by-page CSV. 0 bytes uploaded

  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

The PDFs people count are usually unpublished: an essay before it is handed in, a manuscript before it goes to an agent, a document a translator has been asked to quote for. Counting them does not need anyone else to have a copy, 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

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.

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