PDF Word Count

Count the words in a PDF — the whole document, without copying it into a word processor.

A word count for a format that hides it

Word processors show a running word count; PDFs do not, which is awkward when you need one — to check a submission against a limit, gauge how long a translation will take, or size up a document before you start reading. This reads the text of a PDF and tallies it, giving you the count without the copy-paste-into-a-document dance.

Drop the PDF in and it counts the words for you.

Why a scan comes back as zero

The count only works on PDFs that contain real text. A scanned document is an image to the file, with no words to count, so it will read as empty or near it — the same limitation that stops you selecting text in it. If you need the count from a scan, running optical character recognition first turns the page images into countable text.

How to count the words in a PDF

Open the PDF.
Let it read the text and tally the words, characters and pages.
Use the count for quotes, limits or billing.

Know the length before you commit

Translators, editors and writers are usually paid or bound by word count, but PDFs make that number hard to see. Counting the words up front lets you quote a job accurately or confirm a document fits a stated limit.

The count reflects the real, selectable text; a scanned PDF has no countable text until it has been through OCR.

Common questions

Does it count words on a scanned PDF?

Only if the scan has been OCR'd. A plain image of text contains no words to count until it is recognised.

Does it count headers and footers?

It counts the extractable text on the pages, which usually includes repeated headers and footers.

Is my document uploaded?

No. The words are counted in your browser.

Why does my scanned PDF count as zero words?

A scan is an image with no real text layer. Run OCR first to turn the pages into countable text.

Does it count the whole document?

Yes — it tallies the text across all the pages.

Is my PDF uploaded?