Arabic Word Counter
This Arabic word counter counts words the way Arabic is written: prefixes like و and ال stay with their word, and diacritics never split it. You also get characters, letters without tashkeel and reading time.
- Free, no sign-up
- Counted in your browser, nothing sent
- Opens .docx, .pdf and .epub
- Persian and Urdu too
- Words (كلمات)
- 0
- Characters with spaces
- 0
- ≈ English words after translation
- 0
- Reading time (silent)
- 0 min
- Characters without spaces
- 0
- Arabic letters
- 0
- Diacritics (tashkeel)
- 0
- Sentences
- 0
- Paragraphs
- 0
- Reading aloud
- 0 min
Attached prefixes stay with their word (والكتاب is one word). Diacritics and the stretching character ـ are never counted as letters.
How this counter counts Arabic
Arabic trips up counters built for English. Here is what this one does with the cases that go wrong most often. Every number below comes from the counter above.
| Text | Words | Why |
|---|---|---|
| والكتاب بالمدرسة فقال | 3 | Prefixes and the article stay attached, as written. |
| كَتَبَ الطالبُ | 2 | Diacritics are part of the word, never a break. |
| كـتـاب | 1 | The stretching character ـ (tatweel) is decoration, not a gap. |
| نعم، لا؛ لماذا؟ | 3 | Arabic comma, semicolon and question mark are punctuation, not words. |
| في عام ٢٠٢٦ م | 4 | Arabic-Indic digits count as a word, like 2026. |
| من میخواهم کتابها را بخوانم | 5 | Persian half-spaces (ZWNJ) stay inside the word. |
One Arabic word, three English words
Arabic joins small words onto bigger ones: و (and), ال (the), ب (with, in), ل (for) and pronoun endings. So والكتاب is one Arabic word but three English ones: "and the book". As researchers El Kholy and Habash put it, "all of these clitics are separate words in English".
That is why a translation into English is longer in words. Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review found that 1,000 English words become about 822 Arabic ones, so English runs about 1.22 times the Arabic count. The international reading study IReST measured 1.29 on its own texts. The counter shows the estimate as "≈ English words after translation".
Translators may quote on either count, so check which one an offer uses; our guide to comparing translation quotes covers what else to look for, and the translation cost calculator turns a word count into a price.
Characters: with or without tashkeel?
Counters disagree here. Some count every fatha and shadda as a character, some strip them, and some count a letter with its marks as one. This counter keeps them apart so you can use whichever number you need:
- Characters are what a reader sees as letters, spaces and punctuation, without diacritics and without tatweel.
- Diacritics (tashkeel) are counted on their own, including the small marks used in Quranic text.
- Arabic letters counts only the letters, which helps when a client prices by letter.
Text copied out of some PDFs uses "presentation forms", special codes for the shapes letters take at the start, middle or end of a word. The counter folds them back into ordinary letters first, so a PDF counts the same as typed text. A scanned PDF has no text to count until it goes through OCR: see how to make a PDF searchable. To translate the PDF itself, the PDF translator keeps its layout.
On X (Twitter), each Arabic letter costs one unit, so a post can hold 280 Arabic characters, the same as English (twitter-text rules).
A whole book, counted: The Broken Wings
We ran all eleven chapters of Gibran's الأجنحة المتكسرة (The Broken Wings, 1912), from Arabic Wikisource, through the counter:
- 16,000 words and 90,899 characters, with only 598 diacritics (Wikisource's text is mostly unvowelled).
- About 19,500 words once translated into English.
- About an hour and a half of silent reading.
Reading time uses Brysbaert's Arabic averages: 181 words a minute read silently and 142 aloud, drawn from 15 studies. Other counters use 200 or 240 words a minute with no source.
FAQ
Arabic word count questions
Does و or ال count as a separate word?
No. In Arabic they are written as part of the next word, so والكتاب is one word, just as it is written. In English the same idea needs three words, which is why translations into English come out longer.
Do harakat count as characters?
Not in this counter's character totals. Diacritics are shown on their own line, so you can add them if your teacher or client counts them.
Why is my count different from Word or another counter?
Counters differ on diacritics, tatweel and punctuation surrounded by spaces. Some split كَتَبَ into three pieces at its vowel marks or count a lone ؟ as a word. This counter never does either.
Does it work for Persian and Urdu?
Yes. Letters such as پ چ ژ گ and the half-space inside words like میخواهم are handled, so Persian and Urdu words are not split.
Can I count a PDF or Word file?
Yes. Open a .docx, .pdf, .epub or .txt file and it is read in your browser. A scanned PDF has no text layer to read.
How many English words will my Arabic text become?
About 1.2 to 1.3 times as many: 1,000 Arabic words usually become 1,220 to 1,290 English words (Brysbaert 2019, IReST 2012). The counter shows the estimate as you type.
Is my text uploaded?
No. Counting happens in your browser and nothing is sent or stored.
Does it work for Quranic text?
Yes. The small Quranic marks are counted as diacritics, not letters or words, and the end-of-ayah sign is not a word.
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