Count syllables live, line by line — perfect for haiku.
Each line with its syllable total — hover a line to see the per-word counts. Three lines of 5 · 7 · 5 make a haiku.
A syllable counter tells you how many syllables are in a word, a line, or a whole passage of text — and this one counts as you type. Every line gets its own running total, which is exactly what you need when you're shaping a haiku, matching lyrics to a melody, or keeping a poem's meter steady. Hover any line and you'll see how each individual word was counted.
Beyond poetry, syllables are the raw material of readability. Because the tool already knows your syllable, word, and sentence totals, it also shows the two classic readability measures built on them: the Flesch Reading Ease score and the Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level. Everything is computed in your browser — nothing you type is uploaded anywhere.
English doesn't mark syllables in spelling, so the tool uses the same rules you'd apply reading aloud: it counts vowel groups, drops silent e endings (make is one syllable), keeps voiced ones (table is two), knows that -es adds a syllable after sounds like x and ch (boxes, catches) but not after most others (makes), and treats -ed as silent except after t and d (jumped is one, wanted is two). A list of common irregular words — poetry, business, idea — is handled separately. For everyday English this lands on the dictionary count well over 95% of the time; rare names and coined words are the usual exceptions.
Want the word-level stats too? Try our Word Counter, check sentence lengths with the Sentence Counter, or count repeated words with the Word Frequency Counter.
For ordinary English prose it matches dictionary syllabification well over 95% of the time. The counter applies standard phonetic rules — vowel groups, silent endings, voiced -es and -ed — plus a built-in list of common irregular words. Proper names, brand names, and invented words are the most likely to be off by one; hover the line to see exactly how each word was counted.
Yes. When your text is exactly three lines, the tool compares the per-line counts against the classic 5–7–5 pattern and tells you whether it matches. If it doesn't, you'll see your actual pattern so you know which line to rework.
A syllable is one beat of a word — a vowel sound with any consonants attached to it. Cat has one, water has two, and elephant has three. Clapping along as you say a word out loud is the classroom trick; this tool applies the same idea with spelling rules instead of claps.
Flesch Reading Ease runs from 0 to 100 — higher is easier, with 60–70 considered plain English. The Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level maps the same idea to US school grades, so an 8.0 means a typical eighth-grader could read it comfortably. Both are driven by your average sentence length and syllables per word.
Of course — just type the word on its own. The line badge shows its syllable count, and the hover tooltip confirms it. It's a quick way to settle the classic arguments, like whether fire is one syllable or two (dictionaries say one).
Yes. All counting happens locally in your browser with JavaScript. Your words are never uploaded, stored, or logged, and the tool keeps working offline once the page has loaded.