Text Summarizer

Paste any text, choose your summary length, and get the key sentences extracted instantly. Free, private, runs in your browser.

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Dictate Long-Form, Summarize Later

With Steno, you can brain-dump at 150 WPM and edit after. Voice typing makes the first draft effortless.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How does this text summarizer work?
This tool uses extractive summarization. It splits your text into individual sentences, then scores each sentence based on three factors: word frequency (how often its words appear across the full text, excluding common stop words), position (first and last sentences get a bonus since they often contain thesis statements and conclusions), and length (medium-length sentences of 10-25 words are preferred over very short or very long ones). The top-scoring sentences are selected and returned in their original order so the summary reads naturally.
What is extractive summarization?
Extractive summarization pulls the most important sentences directly from the original text without rewriting them. Every sentence in the summary appears word-for-word in the source. This is different from abstractive summarization, which uses AI language models to generate entirely new sentences that paraphrase the original. Extractive methods are faster, fully transparent, and guarantee accuracy since nothing is fabricated or hallucinated.
What is the ideal summary length?
It depends on your purpose. A 25% summary captures only the most essential points and is ideal for quick overviews or executive summaries. A 50% summary preserves the main arguments along with key supporting details. A 75% summary retains most content, removing only redundant or filler sentences. For academic and professional contexts, 25-30% is the most widely used target. You can also choose a fixed sentence count (3, 5, or 7 sentences) when you need a specific output length.
Can it summarize any type of text?
This summarizer works with any English prose: articles, essays, reports, emails, blog posts, research papers, meeting notes, documentation, and more. It performs best on well-structured text with clear, complete sentences. Very short texts (under 3 sentences) cannot be meaningfully summarized. Bullet points, code, and highly technical notation may not produce optimal results since the algorithm relies on natural sentence structure.

Free Online Text Summarizer: Condense Any Text Instantly

This free text summarizer helps you distill long-form content into its most important sentences. Whether you are a student reviewing lecture notes, a professional skimming research reports, a writer editing a first draft, or anyone who needs to quickly extract the key points from a wall of text, this tool does it in seconds. Paste your content, choose how much compression you want, and get an instant extractive summary that preserves the original wording and logical flow.

Why extractive summarization matters

Unlike AI-powered abstractive summarizers that rewrite your text (and sometimes introduce errors or hallucinations), extractive summarization selects real sentences from your source material. This means every word in the output is a direct quote from the original. For academic work, legal documents, and professional communications, this faithfulness to the source is essential. You can cite the summary knowing it contains the author's exact language.

How the scoring algorithm works

The summarizer evaluates each sentence on three dimensions. First, it calculates word frequency by counting how often each meaningful word appears across the entire text (after filtering out common stop words like "the," "and," "is"). Sentences containing frequently used words score higher because they discuss the text's central topics. Second, it applies position weighting: the first sentence receives a 1.5x bonus and the last sentence a 1.2x bonus, reflecting the well-documented tendency for writers to place key ideas at the beginning and end of a passage. Third, it evaluates sentence length, favoring medium-length sentences (10-25 words) that typically carry substantive information while penalizing very short fragments and overly long run-on sentences.

Practical applications for summarization

Pair summarization with voice typing

Many writers find that the fastest workflow is to dictate a rough first draft using voice-to-text, then use summarization to identify and keep the strongest points. With Steno, you can speak at 150 words per minute into any Mac app, producing content three to four times faster than typing. Once you have a long brain-dump, paste it here to extract the essential sentences. Check our WPM calculator to see how much time voice typing saves, or read about going from 40 WPM typing to 150 WPM speaking. You can also use our typing speed test to benchmark your current speed and see the gap that voice dictation closes.