Count words in a PDF
Import a PDF to get its word, character and page counts, useful for estimating reading time, meeting a length requirement, or checking a document before printing.
How it works
The tool extracts the PDF's text layer page by page, then counts the words (separated by spaces or line breaks) and characters across the whole document. It is useful for checking that a thesis, report or manuscript meets a length requirement before printing, or for estimating an approximate reading time.
Is the count reliable on a PDF exported from Word?
Yes, in the vast majority of cases: a PDF generated from a word processor contains a real text layer, which is extracted faithfully. The result may differ slightly from your original software's word counter (a few words) depending on how hyphens, bullets or footnotes are encoded in the PDF.
Why is the word count zero on my scan?
Because a scanned PDF is just an image of each page: no text is actually stored in the file, only pixels. Without a prior OCR (optical character recognition) step, no tool can extract words from it.
100% local processing in your browser (WebAssembly) — your document never leaves your device.