Text & Writing Utilities · Free tool
Word Count by Section
Get total words, characters, paragraphs, sentences, and reading time — plus a per-section breakdown for any Markdown-formatted document.
Updated May 2026
Words
86
Characters
467
Paragraphs
12
Sentences
11
Reading time
0.3 min
By section
| Section | Words | Paragraphs | % of total |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Introduction | 12 | 1 | 14.0% |
| # Background | 21 | 1 | 24.4% |
| ## Prior Work | 8 | 1 | 9.3% |
| # Method | 11 | 1 | 12.8% |
| # Results | 12 | 1 | 14.0% |
| # Discussion | 9 | 1 | 10.5% |
Reading time: calculated at ~250 words/minute (average adult reading speed for non-fiction). Adjust mentally if your audience reads denser/lighter content. Longer sections often warrant being split — most modern long-form sweet spot is 200-500 words per section.
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What it does
Get total words, characters, paragraphs, sentences, and reading time — plus a per-section breakdown for any Markdown-formatted document. Useful for catching unbalanced sections (one section that’s 60% of the document probably needs to be split) and verifying word-count targets.
Embed this tool on your siteShow snippetHide
Paste this snippet into any page. Loads on-demand (lazy), no tracking scripts, and sized to most dashboards. Replace the height to fit your layout.
<iframe src="https://freetoolarena.com/embed/word-count-by-section" width="100%" height="720" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" title="Word Count by Section" style="border:1px solid #e2e8f0;border-radius:12px;max-width:720px;"></iframe>How to use it
- Paste your document with markdown headings.
- Read total + per-section stats.
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