Does the word counter work on scanned PDFs?

Scanned PDFs contain images of text, not actual text data. Our tool will return zeros for scanned files. Use our OCR PDF tool first to make scanned text machine-readable.

What counts as a word?

Any sequence of non-whitespace characters separated by spaces or newlines counts as a word. This includes numbers and hyphenated terms.

How is reading time calculated?

Reading time is based on an average reading speed of 200 words per minute and rounded up to the nearest minute.

Is my PDF uploaded to a server?

Your file is transmitted securely over HTTPS and processed on our server. We do not store your files after processing.

PDF Word Counter — Words, Pages & Reading Time

Analyze word count, character count, reading time, and more in any PDF.

Click or drag a PDF file here

PDF only · Up to 50MB

Or import from cloud

How to count words in a PDF

We extract the text from every page with pdfjs-dist and report nine stats: word count, character count, characters without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, pages, unique words, average words per sentence, and estimated reading time.

If the PDF is a scan with no embedded text, run it through OCR PDF first so the counter has real words to count.

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PDF Word Counter — Words, Pages & Reading Time

How to count words in a PDF

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