Essay Page Count Calculator
How many pages is your essay? Set the font, size and spacing your brief asks for.
How many pages is my essay?
In 12-point Times New Roman with 1-inch margins, a page of typical essay prose holds about 309 words double-spaced and 619 single-spaced. Arial is wider, so the same page holds about 282 words double-spaced. The table uses the same calculation as the tool above.
| Length | Times 12 single | Times 12 double | Arial 12 double | Calibri 11, 1.15 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 250 words | 0.4 | 0.8 | 0.9 | 0.4 |
| 500 words | 0.8 | 1.6 | 1.8 | 0.8 |
| 750 words | 1.2 | 2.4 | 2.7 | 1.3 |
| 1,000 words | 1.6 | 3.2 | 3.5 | 1.7 |
| 1,500 words | 2.4 | 4.8 | 5.3 | 2.5 |
| 2,000 words | 3.2 | 6.5 | 7.1 | 3.3 |
| 2,500 words | 4.0 | 8.1 | 8.9 | 4.2 |
| 3,000 words | 4.8 | 9.7 | 10.6 | 5.0 |
| 4,000 words | 6.5 | 12.9 | 14.2 | 6.7 |
| 5,000 words | 8.1 | 16.2 | 17.7 | 8.4 |
Why teachers say 250 words per page
The classroom rule of thumb — 250 words per double-spaced page, 500 single-spaced — is deliberately rounded down. A real essay page also carries a title or heading block, block quotations, short paragraphs and the odd heading, all of which use space without adding many words. If your brief gives a page count, treat our estimate as what a page of continuous prose holds and the rule of thumb as a safe lower figure; then check the page count in your word processor with the exact formatting you were given.
How the calculation works
Rather than using one fixed words-per-page figure, the calculator lays out lines the way a word processor does:
- Line width and height. The page size minus the margins gives the text area. Each font's “single” line height comes from the font's own vertical metrics (Times New Roman and Arial are about 1.15 × the font size; Calibri about 1.22 ×), multiplied by your line spacing.
- Words per line. We measured the average width of a word plus its space in each font across about 19,000 words of modern English prose, using metric-compatible versions of the fonts (Liberation Serif for Times New Roman, Liberation Sans for Arial, Carlito for Calibri, Caladea for Cambria and Liberation Mono for Courier New). Half a word is lost at the end of each line on average, because words do not break.
- Paragraphs. Each paragraph starts with a half-inch indent and ends on a part-filled line, so shorter paragraphs mean fewer words per page.
Checked against a full line-by-line layout of real text, the estimate stays within about 3% across every font, size and spacing in the tool. Your own count can still differ by a few lines because of headings, footnotes, widow and orphan control and your word processor's version of the font.