Nobody asks this question idly. Somebody has set you a page limit, and you need to know how much trouble you are in.
Roughly 250 words per double-spaced page, or 500 single-spaced, at 12pt Times New Roman with one-inch margins. That is the figure every calculator gives you and it is a reasonable default.
The asterisk is large. Change the font and that number moves by more than fifty per cent in either direction. The same 1,000 words is four double-spaced pages in Times New Roman and closer to seven in Courier New — and a marker who has read a thousand essays can spot the difference from across a room.
12pt Times New Roman, one-inch margins. The standard against which everything else is a deviation.
| WORDS | DOUBLE-SPACED | SINGLE-SPACED |
|---|---|---|
| 250 | 1 page | ½ page |
| 500 | 2 pages | 1 page |
| 750 | 3 pages | 1½ pages |
| 1,000 | 4 pages | 2 pages |
| 1,500 | 6 pages | 3 pages |
| 2,000 | 8 pages | 4 pages |
| 2,500 | 10 pages | 5 pages |
| 3,000 | 12 pages | 6 pages |
| 5,000 | 20 pages | 10 pages |
| 10,000 | 40 pages | 20 pages |
These are clean because the underlying arithmetic is clean. It is also why you should not trust them to the page — a real document has headings, paragraph breaks, a title and possibly a block quote, and every one of those costs vertical space that this table does not know about.
This is the part most conversion tools skip, and it is the part that actually determines your answer.
| FONT, 12PT DOUBLE-SPACED | WORDS PER PAGE | NOTES |
|---|---|---|
| Times New Roman | ~250 | The academic default, and the baseline for every conversion you have ever seen. |
| Calibri | ~280 | Word's modern default. Narrower than Times, so you fit more — which quietly makes your essay look shorter than it is. |
| Arial | ~230 | Wider than Times at the same point size. Roughly 8% fewer words per page, which is nearly a whole page over a 3,000-word essay. |
| Georgia | ~215 | Generous letterforms and a large x-height. Beautiful to read, expensive in pages. |
| Courier New | ~60 | Monospaced, so every character occupies the same width. A quarter the density of Times. This is not a typo. |
Courier deserves its own paragraph. At around 60 words per double-spaced page, a 2,000-word essay becomes a 33-page document. Screenwriters use it deliberately — a page of screenplay in Courier approximates a minute of screen time, which is a genuinely useful property. Students occasionally discover it the night before a deadline and believe they have found a loophole. They have found the most conspicuous possible way to announce that they padded.
Read the section above again and the reason is obvious. A page count can be changed by up to four times without altering a single word. Font, size, spacing, margins — four dials, all of them in the writer's hands, none of them visible in a word count.
So most academic departments moved to words, and most that still specify pages also specify the formatting in the same breath — 12pt, double-spaced, one-inch margins, which is really a word count wearing a disguise.
The practical upshot: if you have been given a page limit with no formatting requirement attached, somebody has been careless. Ask. The alternative is guessing, and the range between a defensible guess and an indefensible one is enormous.
Working to a word limit instead? Count words, characters, sentences and reading time as you write — no formatting guesswork involved.
Open the counter →Work backwards, in this order.
If you find yourself short and reaching for the margin dial, the essay counter guide covers what actually counts toward an academic limit — footnotes and bibliographies included, which is where a few hundred words often turn out to be hiding.
How many pages is 1,000 words?
Four double-spaced or two single-spaced, at 12pt Times New Roman with one-inch margins. In Calibri it is closer to three and a half double-spaced; in Courier New it is nearer seventeen.
How many words is 5 pages?
About 1,250 double-spaced or 2,500 single-spaced. If the brief does not say which, assume double-spaced — it is the academic default and the safer assumption, since coming in long is the more recoverable error.
Does 1.5 spacing count as double?
No, and the difference is about 30%. If a brief says double-spaced, 1.5 will be noticed — line spacing is one of the few formatting choices visible at a glance without measuring anything.
Do headings and titles count toward the pages?
They occupy the pages, so yes in that sense — but whether they count toward a word limit is a separate question with a different answer depending on your department. Headings usually count; title pages usually do not.
Why does my document have more pages than the table says?
Structure. Headings, paragraph spacing, block quotes, tables and figures all consume vertical space that a pure words-per-page figure ignores. A well-structured document routinely runs 20 to 30% longer in pages than its word count predicts.
Related: essay word counter, the complete word count guide, how long a blog post should be, citation generator.