We all love watching numbers go up. There’s something undeniably motivating about keeping a streak alive, and sometimes that’s just the thing we need to push us on days we don’t want to write. Can’t break the streak!
Recently, our online community has been asking for word count tracker recommendations to help them keep up their daily writing goals. We’ve rounded up a few of them for you in no particular order.
Of course, if you prefer to track your writing sessions the analog way, we have a blog post for that. Coming soon is the sequel to that blog post, but we wanted to get these suggestions out to you first! Follow us on Instagram and join our online community, so you don’t miss when we post it!
Pacemaker
As a word count tracking site, Pacemaker has just the right amount of bells and whistles. Once you’ve set your goal and picked a strategy, Pacemaker will calculate a schedule for you to come back to on the site—or download it to use in iCal.
Beyond the daily word count graphs, Pacemaker also lets you add checklists and notes, and they have a nifty text change calculator, so you can see how much progress you’ve made during revisions. It’s a great choice for someone who already has a favorite word processor they don’t want to give up!
Pacemaker is a favorite of several indie authors, including friend of WA Kandi Steiner, who’ll be teaching a new class for us in 2024! If you’re already in our online community, you can find it under Classes/Events in the sidebar.
You can get started using Pacemaker for free, which allows you to only have two “plans” at the same time, or upgrade to one of their two premium options, both under $100 per annum.
Novelpad
If you’re looking for more bells and whistles and if you’re willing to spend to make that happen, Novelpad could be worth looking into. It’s part word count tracker, part scene card organizer, and part word processor, plus it has ProWritingAid built in, which would be great once you get to the editing stage.
Novelpad is $15 a month or $120 a year, but you can get started with a two-week free trial now.
My Write Club
My Write Club is the simplest of all the sites we’ve listed. You make your goal, you update your word count, and you monitor your progress. It’s another great option if you have a favorite word processor and are just looking for a way to visualize the growth of your project.
What makes it unique is its emphasis on friends and group writing sprints. You can connect with other writers and see their public goals, coordinate a word sprint amongst yourselves, or participate in the worldwide word sprint that restarts every half hour. If you have Dropbox, your work will be backed up there once a minute.
My Write Club is currently in Beta, so the site is free to use!
750 Words
This site will not be for every writer. That’s because it wasn’t designed for writing fiction—it was created to be used with the perennially popular morning pages practice from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. What makes it interesting is that it will analyze the words on the page and give you insights that could prove useful, including the moods of your text and which of the five senses is featured most prominently.
One downside to 750 Words is its lack of rich text formatting, so if you were looking to write within its native word processor, that may turn you off. However, if you format your own ebooks, you might be delighted to learn that you can format your work using Markdown!
You can start using 750 Words with a 30-day free trial. After that, it costs $5 a month.
Reedsy
If you’d like to be able to track your word count, write your book, and format it for publication all in one place, I cannot recommend Reedsy highly enough!
I’ve talked about how I use Reedsy before, but I haven’t talked about its Goals & Insights tab. Available within Reedsy’s book editor (no separate tabs required!), you can add a writing goal and set the days of the week you want to write, and Reedsy will calculate how many words per day to write to finish on time while tracking your word count in the background as you write.
Using Reedsy’s book editor (and setting goals and formatting your book, albeit with limited customization options) is free! While its in Beta, their planning and outlining features are also available to use for free.
4TheWords
If you struggle with finding the motivation to write every day—or to hit your target daily word count—this is the site for you. On 4TW, the RPG for writers, you battle monsters by hitting a word count in a given time limit. You’re rewarded with not only the satisfaction of new words and a writing session well done, but also loot, coins, and advancement in the overarching story. You can also choose to take part in their multiple themed events throughout the year that keep you absolutely hooked.
They also recently added the ability to set goals for your account or individual projects.
Using 4TW, I went from being the writer who would manage maybe a few thousand words a month to the writer who averages over 20,000 words a month!
Prior to 2024, 4thewords was $4 a month, but 4thewords has since added a free plan! Get the details.
TrackBear
TrackBear is a new way to track words, chapters, pages, scenes, lines, or time spent writing or editing. Want to set your own goal? You can. Looking to maintain a streak? You can track the days you write, too! And just like other word count trackers, you can display your data visually in charts so you’re better able to see your progress—and if you join or start a leaderboard with friends, you can see each other’s progress, too!
In case it hasn’t already sold you, TrackBear is also free to use forever, doesn’t have ads, and doesn’t utilize AI—rare things to find on the web these days!
Spreadsheets
Before there were so many cool options for tracking your word count, there were spreadsheets. If you like to work offline, or if you don’t have reliable access to WiFi, this may still be the best option for you!
In the past, we’ve made available a simple multi-project word count tracker. Now we’ve made a much smarter spreadsheet!
