Write to a target with confidence. Pick your essay type — Common App, IELTS, TOEFL, or UCAS 2026 — and a live progress bar tracks your words and characters against the exact limit.
Need a word-frequency breakdown, sentence and paragraph counts, or PDF / Word upload? Use the full Word Counter, or check any limit on the limits cheat sheet.
Choose a preset — Common App 650, UCAS 2026, IELTS Task 1 or Task 2, TOEFL Independent or Integrated — or set a Custom target in words or characters. Each preset knows whether its limit is a maximum you must stay under or a minimum you must clear.
Type directly or paste your essay into the box. Words and characters update on every keystroke, counted the same Unicode-aware way as the main Word Counter, so contractions and hyphenated words each count once. Nothing is uploaded — the count runs entirely in your browser.
The bar fills as you write and changes colour near the limit: amber as you approach a maximum, red if you go over, green once you clear a minimum. The status line tells you exactly how many words or characters you have left or still need, so you can stop at the right length.
The Common Application personal essay is capped at 650 words with a 250-word floor. The online box will not accept more than 650, so trim before you paste. Most strong essays land between 500 and 650 words — depth and focus matter more than hitting the ceiling exactly.
The 2026 UCAS personal statement replaces the single 4,000-character essay with three questions, each limited to 1,000 characters including spaces. That is roughly 150–170 words per section. Because the limit is in characters, track each answer separately with the character goal.
IELTS Writing Task 1 needs at least 150 words and Task 2 at least 250. Fall short and you lose marks; pad with filler and your coherence score drops. Aim just above each minimum — around 170 and 280 words — so you satisfy the requirement without waffling.
A TOEFL independent essay is usually about 300 words or more, while the integrated task runs a tighter 150–225 words because it summarises sources rather than arguing. There is no hard maximum, but the top scores go to complete, well-developed responses, not the shortest ones.
Graduate statements of purpose and scholarship essays often specify their own word or character caps — 500, 800, or 1,000 words are common. Use the Custom goal to enter the exact number from your prompt and keep the live count in view while you edit toward it.
School and university essays usually set a word range with a tolerance of about 10%. Set your assignment's target as a Custom maximum, keep the bar out of the red, and use the cut your word count guide when you need to trim the last hundred words.