Word count API
Instantly count words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, and get a reading-time estimate.
| Endpoint | POST https://astraltext.com/api/v1/word-counter |
| Auth | Bearer token, free |
| Sends | input: text |
| Returns | result: text |
| Price | Free. 1,000 calls a day, 60 a minute. |
When to call it
Counts decide things: whether a meta description fits, whether a post is long enough to publish, what reading time to show, whether a field will be truncated. Computing them where the content is created keeps every one of those decisions consistent.
For a one-off, the browser version needs no token and never sends your data anywhere: it runs on your own machine.
Example
curl
curl -X POST https://astraltext.com/api/v1/word-counter \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ast_YOUR_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"input": "The first sentence. The second one is a little longer than the first."}'response
{
"tool": "word-counter",
"result": "Words: 13\nCharacters: 69\nCharacters (no spaces): 57\nSentences: 2\nParagraphs: 1\nReading time: ~1 min",
"chars": 163,
"ms": 5
}In your language
JavaScript
const res = await fetch("https://astraltext.com/api/v1/word-counter", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.ASTRAL_TOKEN}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json",
},
body: JSON.stringify({"input": "The first sentence. The second one is a little longer than the first."}),
});
if (!res.ok) throw new Error((await res.json()).detail);
const { result } = await res.json();Python
import os, requests
res = requests.post(
"https://astraltext.com/api/v1/word-counter",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['ASTRAL_TOKEN']}"},
json={"input": "The first sentence. The second one is a little longer than the first."},
timeout=30,
)
res.raise_for_status()
result = res.json()["result"]Parameters
| Field | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| input | string | Required. Up to 200,000 characters per call. |
Errors
Errors are RFC 7807 problem documents with a stable type you can branch on.
| missing-token | 401 | No Authorization header. |
| bad-request | 400 | input missing or the wrong type. |
| tool-failed | 422 | The input could not be processed. detail says why. |
| quota-exceeded | 429 | Past 1,000 calls today. |
Questions
- What comes back?
- A report with word count, character count with and without spaces, sentence count, paragraph count and an estimated reading time.
- How is reading time estimated?
- From the word count at an average adult reading speed. It is an estimate for display, not a measurement.
- How is a word defined?
- A run of non-whitespace characters. Hyphenated words count as one, which is what a person counting would say.
Other endpoints
- AI text cleaner API
- Remove em dashes API
- Remove invisible characters API
- Remove emoji API
- Remove line breaks API
- Strip Markdown API
A token takes thirty seconds
Free, no card, 1,000 calls a day, and the same token works on astraltext.com, astralpdf.com, astraljson.com and astralbatch.com.
Get a free token