Text Studio
All-in-one text analysis — word count, character count, reading time at 3 speeds, speaking time, Flesch-Kincaid readability, keyword density with top 20 phrases, case converter (8 modes), find & replace, whitespace cleaner, and social media character limits for 10 platforms with live progress bars. 100% private — your text never leaves your browser.
Text Studio Tool
Everything in this free text analysis tool
Most word counters do one thing. Text Studio does everything — all statistics update in real time as you type, with no button press required.
How to use Text Studio — step by step
How Text Studio compares to other word counters
Most word counters are minimal — word count, character count, and perhaps reading time. Text Studio combines every text analysis feature in a single tool with real-time updates and no account required.
| Feature | LazyTools ✦ | WordCounter.net | Timbrica | WordCounter.io |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Real-time word & character count | ✔ Yes | ✔ Yes | ✔ Yes | ✔ Yes |
| Reading time at 3 different speeds | ✔ Slow / Avg / Fast | Avg only | ✔ Yes | ✘ No |
| Speaking time calculator | ✔ 2 speeds | ✘ No | ✘ No | ✘ No |
| Flesch readability score | ✔ Yes | ✔ Yes | ✔ 6 formulas | ✘ No |
| Keyword density with n-grams | ✔ 1/2/3-word | ✔ Yes | ✔ Yes | ✔ Yes |
| Unique word count | ✔ Yes | ✘ No | ✘ No | ✘ No |
| Vocabulary richness score | ✔ Yes | ✘ No | ✘ No | ✘ No |
| 8-mode case converter | ✔ 8 modes | ✘ No | Partial | ✘ No |
| Find & replace with regex | ✔ Yes | ✘ No | ✔ Yes | ✘ No |
| Social media character limits | ✔ 10 platforms | ✘ No | ✔ 8 platforms | ✘ No |
| Writing goal with progress bar | ✔ Yes | ✔ Yes (account) | ✔ Yes | ✘ No |
| Export / copy stats | ✔ Yes | ✘ No | ✘ No | ✘ No |
| Text never uploaded / no server | ✔ Always | ✘ Server processes | ✔ Yes | ✘ Server processes |
| No account required | ✔ Yes | ✔ Free tier | ✔ Yes | ✔ Yes |
The Complete Guide to Word Count, Reading Time and Text Analysis
Word count is one of the most commonly checked metrics in writing — whether you are meeting an assignment word limit, hitting an SEO target for a blog post, preparing a speech, or checking that a social media caption fits within platform limits. Text analysis goes much further than counting words: understanding reading time, readability score, keyword density and unique vocabulary all inform whether your content will perform as intended.
Why word count matters — across different contexts
Different writing contexts have very different word count requirements. Academic essays typically specify exact word count ranges — 1500 to 2000 words for an undergraduate essay, 80000 to 100000 words for a doctoral dissertation — with penalties for going significantly over or under. Blog posts for SEO typically perform best at 1500 to 2500 words for competitive topics, where depth signals authority to search engines. Short articles and news pieces are typically 500 to 800 words. Landing pages and product descriptions are usually 300 to 500 words.
Social media writing has strict character limits imposed by the platform. Twitter/X limits posts to 280 characters. Instagram captions can be up to 2200 characters but only the first 125 characters show before a "more" button. LinkedIn posts can be up to 3000 characters. YouTube video titles should be under 100 characters to display in full in search results. Meta descriptions for SEO should be between 140 and 160 characters — shorter than that wastes the opportunity; longer gets truncated in search results.
How reading time is calculated
Reading time is calculated by dividing the total word count by an assumed reading speed in words per minute (WPM). The challenge is that reading speed varies substantially between readers and content types. Research typically cites 200 to 250 WPM as the average adult silent reading speed for non-fiction text. Text Studio uses 238 WPM for average reading, 150 WPM for slow reading (appropriate for children, ESL readers, or dense technical content), and 350 WPM for fast reading (speed readers or lighter content).
Speaking speed is slower than reading speed. Conversational speech runs at 120 to 150 WPM. Formal presentations and speeches are typically 130 to 150 WPM — slower enough to allow the audience to process each point. Auctioneers and radio presenters can exceed 250 WPM, but for most public speaking contexts, 130 to 150 WPM is the practical planning range.
Understanding the Flesch Reading Ease score
The Flesch Reading Ease formula, developed by Rudolf Flesch in 1948, calculates text readability from average sentence length and average syllables per word. The formula produces a score from 0 to 100. Higher scores indicate easier reading. A score of 60 to 70 is considered ideal for most web content — readable by the general adult population without being simplistic. Scores above 80 are easy enough for teenagers and non-native English speakers. Scores below 30 are suitable only for academic and specialist professional audiences.
The main drivers of low readability scores are long sentences and polysyllabic words. Long sentences require more working memory to parse. Polysyllabic words are less familiar and take longer to decode. Improving a low readability score involves shortening sentences by splitting them at conjunctions, replacing long words with shorter synonyms, and removing unnecessary qualifications and hedging phrases. Academic writing conventions often require longer sentences and technical vocabulary, which is why academic text typically scores in the 10 to 30 range.
Keyword density — the right approach for SEO
Keyword density measures how often a keyword or phrase appears in your text relative to total word count. A keyword appearing 15 times in a 1000-word article has a density of 1.5%. The traditional SEO guideline is 1 to 2% for primary keywords and 0.5 to 1% for secondary keywords. However, Google's modern ranking systems evaluate semantic relevance and topical authority — not raw keyword frequency. Keyword density is best used as a diagnostic tool: if your primary keyword has zero mentions, you have a targeting problem; if it has 10%, you likely have a stuffing problem.
The most useful keyword analysis for SEO is the n-gram breakdown — looking at not just single keywords but 2-word and 3-word phrases. A 3-word phrase appearing 8 times in 1000 words with a density of 0.8% may be your most valuable long-tail keyword. Text Studio's keyword panel shows top 20 keywords at all three n-gram levels, making it straightforward to identify over-used and under-used terms.
Case conversion — when each mode is useful
Case conversion is essential in several specific workflows. UPPERCASE is used for headings, labels, and acronyms. Sentence case is the standard for body text and social media posts. Title Case capitalises the first letter of each major word and is used for article headlines, book titles and formal headings. camelCase is standard for variable names in JavaScript and other programming languages. snake_case is used in Python, SQL, and URL slugs. kebab-case is used in HTML, CSS class names, and URL paths. Alternate case (aLtErNaTe) is used for social media irony, mocking tone, or stylistic effect in informal contexts.
Vocabulary richness — what it reveals about your writing
Vocabulary richness (also called the type-token ratio or lexical diversity) measures the proportion of unique words in your text. It is calculated as unique words divided by total words. A ratio of 1.0 means every word appears exactly once — maximum variety. A ratio of 0.1 means most words are repeated many times — typical of highly repetitive text. For most quality writing, a richness score of 0.4 to 0.7 is healthy: diverse enough to be engaging, but with enough repeated core terms for coherence.
Very short texts have artificially high richness scores because there is insufficient word count to generate natural repetition. Very long texts naturally have lower richness because function words (the, a, of, to, and) are used frequently throughout. Vocabulary richness is most meaningful when comparing texts of similar length and genre.