Count the words, characters and sentences in a PDF without exporting it to a word processor first.
PDF Word Counter
Count the words, characters and sentences in a PDF without exporting it to a word processor first.
Each page is read for the position of its text in this tab, and the document itself never leaves your device — which matters when the thing you are quoting on is a draft contract.
Translators quote by the word, universities set limits by the word, and a filing can be rejected for exceeding one — and all three arrive as a PDF. The usual workaround is to export the file to a word processor and count there, which reflows the text, drags the running header into the body and quietly changes the number you are paid on. This counts the words where they are. Lines are rebuilt from their spacing on the page, a word broken across a line break is put back together, the title line and page number repeated on every page are left out, and every page is listed on its own, so you can count a chapter rather than a book.
Features
Words, characters with and without spaces, sentences and paragraphs
A page-by-page table with a bar, so the heavy pages stand out
Reading time at 238 words a minute, speaking time at 130
Running headers and footers found by repetition and left out of the count
Number-only tokens such as 2024, 3.14 or 1,000 can be excluded
Chinese and Japanese characters counted one word each, as word processors do
The twenty most frequent words, with the common ones hidden or shown
Several PDFs at once, with a batch total and a CSV row per page
How to use the PDF Word Counter
Drop one PDF, or a stack of them, onto the page
Leave the header and footer setting on for a report, off for a manuscript
Read the totals, then open the page-by-page table to count a chapter
Copy the summary, or download the per-page CSV
Example
Input
contract-v4.pdf — 38 pages
Output
12,480 words · 78,110 characters (66,203 without spaces) · 641 sentences · 328 words a page · 52 min to read, 1 h 36 min to read aloud
The footer repeated on all 38 pages was recognised and left out.
Common errors & troubleshooting
A scanned document counts zero words. — Those pages are pictures of text and carry no text layer at all, which the tool says outright and lists the pages for. Read them with PDF OCR first, then count the result.
The count is higher than the one my word processor gives. — Turn on "Ignore running headers and footers" and "Ignore number-only tokens". A repeated title line across 300 pages adds thousands of words a word processor never counted.
The page figures add up to more than the document total. — A sentence or paragraph broken over a page break belongs to two pages but is one sentence, so the document total subtracts it once. The column is per page; the total is the document.
Only the first 500 pages were read. — That is the limit for one pass. Split the file with Split PDF, count the parts, and add the totals — the warning names the file it applied to.
Frequently asked questions
Why does a word count taken from a PDF differ from the one in a word processor?
Because a PDF has no words in it. It has positioned glyphs, and any counter has to decide where lines, words and paragraphs begin. Exporting the file makes those decisions too, and differently — which is why the same document gets three answers from three tools. Here the rules are visible: hyphenated line breaks are rejoined, running headers are dropped, and numbers can be excluded.
How is a word split across a line break counted?
As one word. A line ending in "exam-" followed by a line starting "ple" is rejoined into "example" before anything is counted, because that is what the author wrote. A real hyphen is left alone: "Anglo-" followed by "Saxon" keeps its hyphen, since the next line starts with a capital.
Which figure does a translation agency quote on?
It depends on the language pair: European agencies usually quote per source word, Japanese and Chinese work is often quoted per character, and some houses use characters without spaces. All three are shown, along with a separate count of Chinese and Japanese characters.
Where do the reading and speaking times come from?
238 words a minute for silent reading of prose and 130 for reading aloud, both averages from reading research. They are a guide rather than a measurement: a dense technical page or a table of figures takes considerably longer than the average.
Can I count a set of PDFs as though they were one document?
Yes. Drop them together and the headline figures cover the whole batch, while each file keeps its own row and the CSV carries the file name on every page row. Files that will not open are listed with the reason instead of being counted as empty.
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