📊 PDF Word Count Client

We use pdf.js to read the actual text layer from every page — the same characters a text editor would see. A "word" is any sequence of non-whitespace characters, so "hello,world" counts as one word and "hello world" counts as two. Hyphenated words count as one. This matches how Microsoft Word and most word processors count.

Yes. Drop as many PDFs as you want — you get per-file counts in a table, plus a grand total in the big number at the top. This is perfect for translation quotes (many source files), freelance project estimates, and academic submissions with appendices.

Almost certainly it's a scanned PDF — the pages are images of paper, not real text. The word count tool can only read actual text. Run the PDF through OCR PDF first to add a text layer, then run Word Count on the result.

Rare alternative: the PDF has an unusual font encoding where the underlying character codes don't map to visible letters. Again, OCR would fix it.

We use 200 words per minute for silent reading — the widely accepted average for adults reading English prose. Speaking time uses 150 words per minute, the typical pace for clear presentations and audiobooks. Both are rough estimates; technical content reads slower, and skimming reads faster.

Yes — we count everything in the text layer, which includes headers, footers, page numbers, and footnotes. If your PDF has "Page 3 of 120" on every page, those four words × 120 pages add 480 words to the total. For most documents this is negligible (less than 0.5%), but for very short PDFs it matters. You can see per-page counts in the expanded row to verify.

No. Everything runs in your browser using pdf.js. Your files never leave your device — safe for confidential manuscripts, legal documents, and unpublished drafts.