Upload a PDF file to instantly count words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, and more. Everything happens in your browser.
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Max 10 MB / 100 pages
| PDF type | Extractable? | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Standard text PDF (Word / LaTeX export) | Yes | Drop file in, get instant word count |
| PDF/A archival | Yes | Same as text PDF, fully indexable |
| Form-fillable PDF | Partial | Form values are extracted along with body text |
| Scanned book or document | No (no text layer) | Run OCR first - Adobe Acrobat, Google Drive, or Tesseract |
| Mixed (scan + text overlay) | Partial | Only the text layer counts; scanned pages count as 0 words |
| Encrypted / password-protected | No | Decrypt first via "Save without security" in viewer |
| PDF with embedded fonts only | Sometimes | Custom fonts without ToUnicode maps may garble extraction |
| Document | Typical limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Resume - one page | 400-600 words | Tech / corporate roles |
| Resume - two pages | 700-1,000 words | Senior / executive |
| Federal resume (USA) | 1,500-3,000 words | OPM-style detailed history |
| Cover letter | 250-400 words | 3-4 short paragraphs |
| Personal statement (UCAS) | ~500 words / 47 lines | Strict UK university limit |
| Conference abstract | 150-300 words | Varies by venue |
| Journal article | 3,000-8,000 words | Excludes references in most journals |
| Master's thesis | 15,000-50,000 words | Subject and country dependent |
| PhD dissertation | 40,000-100,000 words | Excluding bibliography and appendices |
| Standard novel manuscript | 70,000-100,000 words | Trade publishing target |
No. The PDF is parsed entirely in your browser using PDF.js. It never leaves your device, never reaches our servers, and is not logged. Close the tab and the file is gone.
Two common reasons. (1) The PDF is a scan or image - it has no text layer to extract. Run OCR (Adobe Acrobat, free tools like Tesseract, or Google Drive's built-in OCR) and re-upload. (2) The PDF is encrypted or password-protected - decrypt it first using your viewer's "Save as unprotected" option.
10 MB and 100 pages. The cap protects browser memory; for larger files split the PDF or paste the text into the fallback box. The limit also keeps page rendering snappy on mobile devices.
For typical text PDFs the count is within 1-2% of Word's number. Differences come from how each tool handles hyphenated line-end words, headers and footers, and footnotes. PDFs with multi-column layouts or unusual fonts may extract text in a different order, but the total word count usually matches.
Yes. Anything in the PDF's text layer is counted, including tables, captions, footnotes, headers, and footers. If you want to exclude those, copy the body text into the fallback paste box instead.
Yes for any language with whitespace word boundaries (English, Spanish, German, French, Russian, etc.). For Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other scriptio-continua languages the word count will not be meaningful - use the Chinese or Japanese word counter tools instead.
Reading time uses 238 words per minute (average silent reading speed). Speaking time uses 150 words per minute (a typical aloud-reading pace). The Reading Time Calculator tool offers four reading modes if you need more granularity.
Yes - this is a common use case. A standard one-page resume is 400-600 words; a two-page senior-level resume is 700-1,000. Drop the PDF in to verify before submission.
Yes, but mind the official rules. Most universities cap submissions at 80,000-100,000 words and ask you to exclude bibliographies and appendices. The tool counts everything in the text layer; subtract your bibliography count manually for the official number.
PDF.js cannot open encrypted PDFs without the password. Open the file in your PDF viewer, choose "Save a copy without security" or print to a new PDF, and upload the unprotected copy.