PDF Word Counter
Count the words in a PDF, Word, PowerPoint or text file without uploading it. Drop the file below and get words, characters, pages, sentences and reading time, plus a word count for every page.
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PDF, DOCX, PPTX, TXT, MD, RTF · counted in your browser, never uploaded
Quick answer
To count the words in a PDF, drop it on the tool above: it reads the text on every page in your browser and gives you the total, the count per page, characters, sentences and reading time. The other two ways are Adobe Acrobat (there is no word count menu, you have to copy the text into Word) and Google Drive (open the PDF with Google Docs, then Tools, Word count). Expect a PDF to show slightly more words than the original Word file, because headers, footers and page numbers get counted as text.
What this document word counter reads
Most word counters only take pasted text. This one opens the file itself, which matters when the document is long, formatted, or sitting in an email attachment you do not want to copy out. Everything runs in your browser tab. The PDF library (Mozilla's pdf.js, the same engine Firefox uses to display PDFs) loads from a public CDN; your file never leaves your computer.
| Format | What is counted | Pages | Not counted |
|---|---|---|---|
| PDF (.pdf) | All text on every page, including headers, footers, captions and page numbers | Real page count, with words per page | Scanned images, text inside pictures, form fields |
| Word (.docx) | Document body, tables, text boxes; footnotes and endnotes shown separately | Page count Word saved in the file, or an estimate at 275 words per page | Headers, footers, comments, tracked deletions |
| PowerPoint (.pptx) | Text on every slide, with a count per slide | Slide count | Speaker notes, slide masters |
| Text (.txt, .md, .csv, .rtf) | Everything in the file; Markdown symbols and RTF codes are stripped where possible | Estimate at 500 words per page | Nothing |
| Old Word (.doc), Pages, ODT | Not supported. Save as .docx or export to PDF first | n/a | n/a |
Why a PDF shows more words than the Word file it came from
Microsoft Word counts the body of the document. When you export to PDF, every header, footer, page number and running title is printed onto each page as ordinary text, so a PDF counter sees them. An 8-page essay with the title and author in the header and a page number in the footer picks up roughly 5 words per page, so 2,000 body words become 2,040. Reference lists and appendices are the other usual gap: Word users often exclude them from the count by selecting only the body, while the PDF includes everything.
If you are checking a submission against a limit, use the per-page table above to find where the extra words sit. A page with 20 words is almost always a title page or a separator; a page with 600 words in a document that averages 300 is usually the bibliography. Subtract those and you have the body count the reviewer will use. For assignments that specify "excluding references", the plain word counter on this site lets you paste just the sections that count.
Scanned PDFs: why the count is zero
A PDF can hold text in two ways. A PDF saved from Word, Google Docs, LaTeX or a browser has a text layer: the characters are stored as characters, and any reader can extract them. A PDF made by a scanner or a phone camera is a picture of a page, and there is nothing to count until an OCR program recognises the letters and adds a text layer. If the tool reports zero words on a document you can clearly read, that is what happened. Acrobat's "Recognize Text", Google Drive (right-click, open with Google Docs) and most free OCR sites will add the layer; drop the converted file back here and the count will work.
A middle case is a PDF where some pages are text and some are scanned appendices or signed forms. The per-page table shows exactly which pages came back empty, so you know whether the gap matters.
How many pages is my word count?
For PDFs the tool reports the real page count. For Word and text files it shows the page count Word saved in the file when there is one, and otherwise estimates. The estimate uses 275 words per page, which is between the two common formats below. Use the words to pages converter for a specific font and spacing.
| Word count | Single-spaced, 12 pt | Double-spaced, 12 pt | Reading time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | 1 page | 2 pages | 2 min |
| 1,000 | 2 pages | 4 pages | 4 min |
| 1,500 | 3 pages | 6 pages | 6 min |
| 2,000 | 4 pages | 8 pages | 8 min |
| 2,500 | 5 pages | 10 pages | 11 min |
| 5,000 | 10 pages | 20 pages | 21 min |
| 10,000 | 20 pages | 40 pages | 42 min |
Reading time at 238 words per minute, the adult average for non-fiction from Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies.
Other ways to count words in a PDF
- Google Drive. Upload the PDF, right-click, Open with Google Docs, then Tools, Word count. Free, but it re-flows the layout and the file sits on Google's servers.
- Microsoft Word. File, Open, choose the PDF; Word converts it and shows the count in the status bar. Works well for simple documents, mangles columns and tables.
- Adobe Acrobat. There is no word count command. Select all, copy, paste into Word or into the word counter.
- Preview on Mac. Same as Acrobat: select all, copy, paste into a counter.
- Command line.
pdftotext file.pdf - | wc -wif you have Poppler installed. Fast and scriptable for batches.
Need to count pasted text instead?
The main word counter gives live counts as you type, plus keyword density and readability
Word CounterCharacter CounterFrequently Asked Questions
How do I count the words in a PDF?
Drop the PDF on this page. It reads the text layer of every page in your browser and reports total words, characters, sentences, pages and the word count per page. Nothing is uploaded. If the PDF is a scan with no text layer, the count will be zero and you need OCR first.
Is my document uploaded anywhere?
No. The file is read by JavaScript running in your browser tab. The PDF reader library is loaded from a CDN, but your file never leaves your computer. Closing the tab removes it from memory.
Why does the PDF word count differ from Microsoft Word?
Word counts the words in the main body plus text boxes and, optionally, footnotes. A PDF export flattens everything, so headers, footers, page numbers, running titles and captions become ordinary text and get counted. A 2,000 word essay with a header on each of 8 pages can show 2,040 words as a PDF. The per-page table helps you spot that.
Can it count a scanned PDF?
Not directly. A scanned PDF is a picture of a page with no text underneath it. Run it through an OCR tool (Adobe Acrobat, Google Drive, or any free OCR site) to add a text layer, then drop the result here.
Does it count words in a .docx Word file?
Yes. It reads the document body, counts footnotes and endnotes separately, and shows the page count Word itself last recorded in the file when that is available. Old .doc files are not supported; save them as .docx first.
What counts as a word?
Any run of characters separated by spaces or line breaks that contains at least one letter or digit. Hyphenated words count once, "3.5" counts once, and standalone punctuation such as a lone dash does not count. This matches how Word and Google Docs count.
How many pages is my word count?
As a rule of thumb, 500 words fill one single-spaced page and 250 words fill one double-spaced page in a 12 point font. For PDFs the tool reports the real page count; for Word and text files it shows the recorded or estimated pages.
Is there a file size limit?
There is no hard limit, but everything happens in your browser, so very large files (several hundred pages or a scanned PDF over 100 MB) can be slow on a phone. A typical 50 page report takes a second or two on a laptop.