PDF Word Count
Count words, characters and pages in a PDF.
Get a word count for any PDF — total words, characters, characters without spaces, and a per-page breakdown. Useful for essays, translations, quotes and content audits. Text is read from the PDF text layer.
Your files are processed locally in your browser. Nothing is uploaded to a server, ever.
Tip
Drop your file here or click to browse. Everything is processed on this device — nothing is uploaded.
Quick answers
- What does this tool do?
- Count words, characters and pages in a PDF. Get a word count for any PDF — total words, characters, characters without spaces, and a per-page breakdown. Useful for essays, translations, quotes and content audits.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free and unlimited, with no account required and no watermark on the result.
- What files are supported?
- PDF files, up to 100 MB each.
- Where is my file processed?
- Entirely in your browser. Your file never leaves your device — nothing is uploaded to a server.
- What are the limitations?
- Relies on the PDF text layer — scanned pages without OCR return zero words. Very large documents may take a moment per page.
- What happens if processing fails?
- You get a clear message explaining what went wrong and how to fix it (try another file, check the format, or start over). Your original file is never touched.
How to PDF Word Count
- Upload the PDF.
- Click "Process" — every page is read.
- Download the .txt word-count report.
Frequently asked questions
Common problems and fixes
- Document properties look wrong or stale
Why: metadata is whatever the creating software wrote — it can be outdated or edited arbitrarily.
Fix: trust the structural checks (pages, sizes, fonts) as ground truth; clean metadata separately if it matters.
- The accessibility checker lists many issues
Why: older PDFs were exported without tagged structure, which screen readers need.
Fix: re-export from the source app with "tagged PDF" enabled, then re-check.
- An encrypted file cannot be analysed
Why: encrypted documents must be unlocked before any tool can parse them.
Fix: remove protection first if you own the password — tools cannot and should not bypass encryption.
Who uses PDF Word Count?
- Compliance teams — checking PDF/A conformance and tagging before documents go to the archive.
- Legal review — inspecting metadata before a document is released or filed.
- PDF producers — QA on generated output — page sizes, fonts embedded, structure intact.