Markdown Stats & Reading Time
Count words, sentences, headings, links, code blocks, and estimate reading / speaking time for any Markdown.
- Characters
- 480
- Chars (no space)
- 393
- Words
- 81
- Sentences
- 6
- Paragraphs
- 8
- Lines
- 22
Markdown structure
- Headings
- 2
- Links
- 1
- Images
- 0
- Code blocks
- 1
- Inline code
- 0
- List items
- 4
- Tables
- 1
- Quotes
- 1
Outline
- H1 Sample Article
- H2 What it counts
How to use
- Paste Markdown in the input.
- Adjust the words-per-minute rate if you read faster or slower than 200.
- Read the counters and the outline.
About this tool
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Paste a Markdown document and get the numbers you actually need before publishing: words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, headings by level, links, images and code blocks, plus an estimated reading time at a words-per-minute rate you can set. The heading list doubles as an outline, which is the quickest way to spot a document that jumps from a second-level heading straight to a fourth. Two figures deserve a pinch of salt. Sentences are counted by terminal punctuation, so abbreviations like e.g. and Dr. each add one. And reading time is a rough guide — the default of 200 words per minute suits ordinary prose, while dense technical writing with code runs considerably slower. Everything runs locally in your browser.
Frequently asked questions
How is reading time calculated?
Word count divided by your WPM (default 200), expressed in minutes and seconds. 200 WPM is roughly the average for fluent adults reading silently.
Why is speaking time fixed at 130 WPM?
Spoken pace is slower than reading. 130 WPM is the typical podcast / audiobook average. The two numbers help when you're estimating how long an article would take to record.
What counts as a sentence?
Anything ending in . ! or ?. This overcounts on URLs and abbreviations like 'Dr.' or 'e.g.', so treat sentence count as an estimate.
Why are inline-code counts sometimes lower than expected?
Backtick pairs inside code fences (lines of three backticks) are intentionally ignored — they belong to the code block, not as inline code in prose.
Does the word count ignore Markdown syntax?
No — words are whitespace-separated tokens of the raw source, so the markup counts too. '# Heading\n\nSee [the docs](https://example.com/a/b) and code.' scores seven: the lone # is a word and the whole link, label and URL together, is one more. A document heavy with links, footnotes or HTML will therefore read as longer than its prose really is, and the reading time inherits that inflation. For a prose-only figure, paste the rendered text rather than the source.
Why is the reading speed here different from the reading-time tool?
This one defaults to 200 wpm and a fixed 130 wpm for speaking; the dedicated reading-time tool starts from Brysbaert's 238 wpm for silent English non-fiction. Neither is wrong — 200 is the round number that has been used in publishing for decades, 238 is the meta-analytic figure — but they will not agree on the same document, so pick one tool and stay with it if you are comparing pieces. The reading speed here is editable; the speaking figure is not.
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