Word and character counter
Paste or type Arabic or English text. See the words, characters, sentences, reading time and how many text messages it takes.
Runs on your device. Your text is not uploaded or saved, and it is gone when you close the page.
How it counts
Anything between spaces that has a letter or a number in it. In Arabic, a word with attached letters such as "وبالكتاب" counts as one word, as it does in most word processors.
Each letter, number, space, mark and emoji counts as one. Arabic short vowel marks (tashkeel) join the letter they sit on, so they do not add to this count, but they do count for text messages.
A text message holds 160 characters of plain Latin letters. One Arabic letter, or one emoji, switches the whole message to Unicode, and then it holds 70. Longer messages are split into parts of 153 or 67.
Based on average adult speeds measured in studies: about 238 words a minute in English and about 138 in Arabic. Your own speed may be faster or slower.
Sources: 3GPP TS 23.038 (the GSM 7-bit alphabet and UCS-2 for SMS) and TS 23.040 (concatenated messages), as explained by SMS providers' encoding guides: 160 GSM-7 or 70 UCS-2 characters in one message, 153 or 67 per part when split; Brysbaert, M. (2019), "How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate", Journal of Memory and Language (average 238 words a minute for silent reading in English); Trauzettel-Klosinski, S. and Dietz, K. (2012), "Standardized assessment of reading performance: the new International Reading Speed Texts IReST", Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (Arabic about 138 words a minute, read aloud). Speaking paces are simple choices, not measurements. Post limits are typical round numbers: each app sets and changes its own rules and may count some characters differently.