Word Counter

Count words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs on web pages with reading and speaking time estimates.

What does Word Counter do?

This actor counts words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs in web page content. It intelligently detects the main content area (article, main, or body) and removes navigation, scripts, and other non-content elements. It also estimates reading time (200 WPM) and speaking time (130 WPM). Process a single page or hundreds of URLs in one run to audit content length across your entire site.

Use cases

• Content strategists -- measure content length across your site to identify thin pages that need expansion
• SEO specialists -- check if pages meet recommended word counts for target keywords and competitive benchmarks
• Editorial teams -- validate that articles meet minimum length requirements before publishing
• Competitive analysts -- measure competitor content depth and compare article lengths across sites
• Podcast/video producers -- estimate speaking time for scripts and articles that will be converted to audio or video

Why use Word Counter?

• Smart content detection -- automatically identifies the main content area (article, main, body) and strips navigation, ads, and scripts
• Comprehensive metrics -- returns word count, character count (with and without spaces), sentence count, paragraph count, heading count, image count, and link count
• Reading and speaking time -- estimates reading time at 200 WPM and speaking time at 130 WPM
• Batch processing -- analyze hundreds of URLs at once instead of pasting text into online tools one page at a time
• Structured JSON output -- every result is machine-readable for easy filtering, sorting, and reporting
• Pay-per-event pricing -- costs just $0.001 per URL analyzed with no monthly subscription

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
urls	string[]	Yes	--	List of web page URLs to count words on

Example input

{
    "urls": [
        "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping",
        "https://example.com"
    ]
}

Output example

{
    "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping",
    "title": "Web scraping - Wikipedia",
    "wordCount": 4523,
    "characterCount": 28450,
    "characterCountNoSpaces": 24100,
    "sentenceCount": 210,
    "paragraphCount": 45,
    "avgWordsPerSentence": 21.5,
    "readingTimeMinutes": 22.6,
    "speakingTimeMinutes": 34.8,
    "headingCount": 18,
    "imageCount": 2,
    "linkCount": 156,
    "contentArea": "article",
    "error": null,
    "analyzedAt": "2026-03-01T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Output fields

Field	Type	Description
url	string	The analyzed page URL
title	string	The page title
wordCount	number	Total words in the main content area
characterCount	number	Total characters including spaces
characterCountNoSpaces	number	Total characters excluding spaces
sentenceCount	number	Total sentences detected
paragraphCount	number	Total paragraphs detected
avgWordsPerSentence	number	Average words per sentence
readingTimeMinutes	number	Estimated reading time at 200 WPM
speakingTimeMinutes	number	Estimated speaking time at 130 WPM
headingCount	number	Number of headings (H1-H6) found
imageCount	number	Number of images found in the content area
linkCount	number	Number of links found in the content area
contentArea	string	HTML element used as content boundary (article, main, or body)
error	string	Error message if analysis failed, null otherwise
analyzedAt	string	ISO timestamp of the analysis

How much does it cost?

Word Counter uses Apify's pay-per-event pricing model. You only pay for what you use.

Event	Price	Description
Start	$0.035	One-time per run
URL analyzed	$0.001	Per page analyzed

Example costs:

• 10 pages: $0.035 + 10 x $0.001 = $0.045
• 100 pages: $0.035 + 100 x $0.001 = $0.135
• 1,000 pages: $0.035 + 1,000 x $0.001 = $1.035

Using the Apify API

You can start Word Counter programmatically from your own applications using the Apify API. The following examples show how to run the actor and retrieve results in both Node.js and Python.

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/word-counter').call({
    urls: ['https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping'],
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('YOUR_TOKEN')
run = client.actor('automation-lab/word-counter').call(run_input={
    'urls': ['https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping'],
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items)

Integrations

Word Counter works with all major automation platforms available on Apify. Export results to Google Sheets to build a content length dashboard and sort pages by word count. Use Zapier or Make to trigger word count checks whenever new content is published in your CMS. Send alerts to Slack when articles fall below your minimum word count threshold. Pipe results into n8n workflows for custom analysis, or set up webhooks to get notified as soon as a run finishes. Chain it with Content Readability Checker to get both length and readability metrics in a single audit.

Tips and best practices

• Focus on content pages, not homepages -- word count metrics are most meaningful on articles, blog posts, and product pages, not navigation-heavy homepages
• Export to Google Sheets and sort by wordCount to quickly identify thin content pages that need expansion
• Compare contentArea values -- if the actor falls back to "body" instead of "article" or "main", the page may lack proper semantic HTML, which could inflate word counts with nav/footer text
• Combine with Content Readability Checker to get both word count and readability scores for a complete content quality audit
• Schedule weekly runs on your blog or content hub to track content production velocity over time

FAQ

How does the actor detect the main content area? It looks for semantic HTML elements in order: <article>, <main>, then falls back to <body>. It strips navigation, footer, sidebar, script, and style elements before counting.

Does it count words in navigation menus and footers? No. The actor filters out non-content elements before counting. The contentArea field in the output tells you which HTML element was used as the content boundary.

Can I use this to count words on pages that require login? No. The actor uses plain HTTP requests and cannot handle authentication. It works best on publicly accessible content pages.