Count words in a PDF
1 min read·23 July 2026
How many words are in your PDF document? PDFrust's word count tool analyses every page and gives you the total number of words, characters and pages instantly — free, without upload.
What do you use a word count for?
Writers check whether an article is within a magazine's word limit. Students verify that their thesis meets the minimum length. Translators estimate the scope of a translation job. In all these cases you want a quick and reliable word count.
How does the tool count words?
The tool extracts text from the PDF's text layer (the text layer built in by the PDF creator) and counts words by splitting on spaces and punctuation. Per page you see the individual word and character count, plus the totals.
Count words in PDF
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Does it work with scanned PDFs?
Scanned PDFs contain images without a text layer. The word count then returns 0 words. In that case first use the OCR tool to make the text recognisable, then count the words.
Is the count always accurate?
The count is based on the built-in text layer of the PDF. If the creator embedded text as an image (even in non-scanned PDFs), the count may be off. For standard Word-to-PDF or InDesign-to-PDF conversions the count is reliable.
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