PDF Word Counter
Count the words and characters in a PDF, in total and page by page, with the reading time. The counts appear as soon as you add the file.
Select a PDF fileor drop it anywhere on this page, or paste
Opens in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
PDF Word Counter, free and private
Count the words in a PDF online. Add the file and the word count appears in seconds, with characters with and without spaces, the number of pages, words per page and an estimated reading time. A table below breaks the count down page by page.
Use it to check an essay, thesis or article against a word limit, to quote a translation or proofreading job, or to see how long a report takes to read. The PDF is read in your browser, so it is never uploaded, and the tool is free with no sign-up.
How to count the words in a PDF
- 1
Add your PDF
Press Select a PDF file or drop the PDF on the page. The text of every page is read as soon as it is added.
- 2
Read the counts
Words, characters, characters without spaces, pages, words per page and reading time fill in while the pages are read. The table lists each page's own counts.
- 3
Count only some pages
To leave out a title page, references or appendices, press Choose pages and tap the pages to count, or type a range such as 3-12. The counts update at once.
- 4
Copy or save the counts
Press Copy counts for a short summary to paste, or Save counts to download a CSV file with the counts of every page and a total row.
Why use PDFToolz for this
Words, characters and pages
The totals cover words, characters with spaces, characters without spaces and pages, the figures word limits and translation quotes are usually based on.
Page by page
Every page gets its own row, so you can see which chapter is long and count a section by choosing its pages.
Reading time
The reading time uses 238 words a minute, the average silent reading speed for non-fiction found in a 2019 review of reading-speed studies of adults.
Private and free
The text is read with pdf.js on your device. There is no upload, account, page limit or watermark.
How the words are counted
The counter reads the text layer of each page, the same text you can select and copy in a PDF reader, and counts it with these rules:
- A word is a run of characters between spaces with at least one letter or digit in it. Numbers like 2026 count, and so do e-mail and don’t, as one word each.
- Dashes, bullets and other punctuation standing on their own are not words.
- A word broken with a hyphen at the end of a line, such as exam- and ple, is joined back and counted once.
- Chinese and Japanese characters count as one word each, because those languages are written without spaces.
- Characters count letters, digits, punctuation and one space between words. Line breaks and runs of spaces count as a single space.
Why counts differ between tools
Microsoft Word, Google Docs and online counters each have their own rules for dashes, numbers, URLs and hyphenated words, so the same text can give slightly different totals. The PDF adds its own differences: headers, footers, page numbers, footnotes and captions are all text on the page and are counted.
When a word limit excludes the title page, references or appendices, choose only the pages that count. To leave out repeated headers and page numbers, convert the PDF with PDF to Markdown with Remove headers and footers on, and count the result in a word processor.
Scanned PDFs have no words to count
A scan or a PDF made from photos holds pictures of pages, not text. Those pages show No text in the table, and a notice lists them. Run the file through OCR PDF to add a text layer, then count the result here.
Frequently asked questions
Add the PDF to this page. The word count, character counts, page count and reading time appear as soon as the pages are read, with a count for every page in the table below.
Yes. It is free with no sign-up, and the PDF is read in your browser, so the file never leaves your device.
Yes. Press Choose pages and pick the pages, or type a range like 2-10. The totals change to cover only those pages.
Yes. Both are shown, along with words and pages, and both are in the CSV you can save.
A scanned page is an image with no text layer. Run OCR PDF on it first, then count the words in the OCR result.
The word count is divided by 238 words a minute, an average silent reading speed for adult readers of non-fiction, and rounded to the nearest minute.
Sources
- How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate (Journal of Memory and Language, vol. 109, 2019) from Marc Brysbaert, Ghent University
Figures checked against these sources on .
Last reviewed . See how we build and test our tools, or report an error.
