How to Count Words in a PDF (Free, No Acrobat Needed)
By the UtilityNest team · · 5 min read
The translation agency wants a quote by this afternoon, and they price per word. The client sent a 24-page PDF. You open it in your browser's PDF viewer, look for a word count, check Acrobat Reader, check Preview... nothing. None of them count words.
It is a surprisingly common gap. Essay limits, translation quotes, journal submissions and freelance invoices all hang on a word count, and the free PDF readers simply do not offer one. The trick is to get the text out, then count it.
The short version: drop the PDF into PDF to Text, copy the result, paste it into the Word Counter. If the PDF is a scan, the same tool offers an OCR button for the pages without text.
Method 1: Extract and count (any device)
- Open PDF to Text and add your PDF. The text appears automatically, with lines and paragraph gaps laid out the way they look on the page.
- Switch off page markers so they do not get counted, and switch on Join lines into paragraphs. That also repairs words split with a hyphen at the end of a line.
- Copy the text and paste it into the Word Counter. Words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and reading time update instantly.
- Delete anything that should not count, like the reference list, and read the new total.
Both tools run in your browser, so a client's confidential document or your unpublished manuscript never leaves your computer.
A worked example: the 24-page quote
A 24-page report, text-based. Extracted and pasted, the Word Counter shows 7,912 words.
- Running header "Annual Review 2026" plus a page number on every page: about 3 words x 24 pages = 72 words that are not real content.
- A 2-page bibliography the client does not need translated: 540 words.
Delete those from the pasted text and the count drops to 7,300. That is the number you quote, with a note saying references were excluded.
7,912 words, including headers, page numbers and references.
7,300 words of body text, with a clear note on what was excluded.
Need just one chapter or section? Pull those pages out first with Extract PDF Pages (type a range like 4-9), then extract the text from the smaller file. Much quicker than deleting thousands of words by hand.
If your PDF is a scan
Try selecting a sentence in your PDF viewer. If nothing highlights, the pages are images, and there is no text to extract. PDF to Text tells you how many pages are affected and offers OCR: choose the document language (13 are available, including English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Korean) and click OCR. The recognition runs in your browser; only the engine and language data download the first time. Proofread names and numbers, since OCR can misread characters.
Method 2: Microsoft Word
- In Word, choose File > Open and pick the PDF.
- Click OK when Word says it will convert it.
- Read the count in the status bar, or open Review > Word Count, which can include or exclude text boxes, footnotes and endnotes.
Simple layouts convert well. Complex ones can end up with stray text boxes that skew the count.
Method 3: Google Docs
Upload the PDF to Google Drive, right-click it and choose Open with > Google Docs, then Tools > Word count (Ctrl+Shift+C). Google runs OCR on many scanned PDFs during the conversion. The catch: the file is uploaded to Google.
Method 4: Mac without Word
Apple's free Pages app counts words. Paste the text in, choose View > Show Word Count, and click the counter to switch to characters or paragraphs. Selecting part of the text shows the count for just that selection.
Why tools disagree slightly
Two tools giving different counts for the same document is normal. The usual reasons:
- Headers, footers and page numbers come along with extracted text but are hidden in Word's count of a .docx.
- Hyphenated line breaks can turn "infor-mation" into two words if the lines are not joined.
- Edge cases such as URLs, "and/or" and numbers with spaces are counted differently by different programs. The Word Counter treats "don't" and "e-mail" as one word each and usually lands within 1% of Microsoft Word.
- Footnotes, captions and tables are included by extraction; many guidelines exclude them.
Which number should you use?
- University assignment: whatever tool your institution names, usually Word, following its rules on what to exclude.
- Translation quote: the source word count, with a note on what was included, so client and translator agree.
- Journal or publisher: body text only, excluding references unless the guidelines say otherwise.
For limits in characters rather than words, such as an abstract, paste the same text into the Character Counter.
Reading time and speaking time
The Word Counter also shows reading time (at 238 words per minute, the average silent reading speed for adults) and speaking time (at 140 words per minute). That is handy if the PDF is a speech or a presentation script: a 1,000-word text takes about four minutes to read and about seven minutes to deliver out loud. You can also set a word goal and watch a progress bar fill up as you edit a draft down to the limit.
Quick answers
Does Adobe Acrobat have a word count?
The free Reader does not. With Acrobat Pro, a common workaround is exporting to Word and counting there.
Can I count words in a password-protected PDF?
Yes, if you know the password: PDF to Text asks for it and uses it only in your browser.
Why are some words stuck together?
Some PDFs position words without real spaces between them, which lowers the count. Word or Google Docs conversion sometimes handles these better.