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Counts prose, not markup.
Word counts that ignore the furniture. Captions, code blocks and shortcode output are excluded, so a heavily illustrated post is not billed as a twenty-minute read.
Most reading-time plugins count every word the post object contains, which includes captions, code samples, shortcode output and whatever a page builder left behind.
This one counts the prose a person will actually read, at a rate the site owner sets, and caches the result against the modified date so it never recalculates without reason.
Our estimates stopped being a running joke.
— A content editor
Counting the right words.
Furniture excluded
Captions, code, shortcode output and block markup are stripped before a single word is counted.
Configurable rate
Words per minute is a setting, because a technical manual and a short story are not read at the same speed.
Image allowance
An optional few seconds per figure, which is closer to how illustrated pieces are actually consumed.
Cached against edits
The count is cached on the modified timestamp, so it recalculates on a real edit and never otherwise.
The rest of the calculation.
Small decisions that separate a plausible estimate from an obviously wrong one.
- Captions and code excluded
- Configurable words per minute
- Optional per-image allowance
- Cache keyed to the modified date
- Template tag and shortcode
- Per-post-type enable switch
- Locale-aware number formatting
- Zero queries on a warm cache
The details
- Version
- 2.0.1
- Released
- Jul 10, 2026
- Default rate
- 225 wpm
- Excluded
- Captions, code, shortcodes
- Cache key
- Post modified time
- Queries
- None when warm
Recent releases
- 2.0.1Jul 2026 — Shortcode output now excluded from the count
- 2.0.0May 2026 — Per-image allowance made optional rather than default
- 1.9.0Apr 2026 — Cache key includes the modified timestamp
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