diff --git a/sdks/java/core/src/main/java/com/google/cloud/dataflow/sdk/transforms/Count.java b/sdks/java/core/src/main/java/com/google/cloud/dataflow/sdk/transforms/Count.java
index ffa11d13a3c9..5ce4d2e671b0 100644
--- a/sdks/java/core/src/main/java/com/google/cloud/dataflow/sdk/transforms/Count.java
+++ b/sdks/java/core/src/main/java/com/google/cloud/dataflow/sdk/transforms/Count.java
@@ -16,10 +16,23 @@
 
 package com.google.cloud.dataflow.sdk.transforms;
 
+import com.google.cloud.dataflow.sdk.coders.Coder;
+import com.google.cloud.dataflow.sdk.coders.CoderException;
+import com.google.cloud.dataflow.sdk.coders.CoderRegistry;
+import com.google.cloud.dataflow.sdk.coders.CustomCoder;
 import com.google.cloud.dataflow.sdk.transforms.Combine.CombineFn;
+import com.google.cloud.dataflow.sdk.util.VarInt;
 import com.google.cloud.dataflow.sdk.values.KV;
 import com.google.cloud.dataflow.sdk.values.PCollection;
 
+import java.io.EOFException;
+import java.io.IOException;
+import java.io.InputStream;
+import java.io.OutputStream;
+import java.io.UTFDataFormatException;
+import java.util.Iterator;
+
+
 /**
  * {@code PTransorm}s to count the elements in a {@link PCollection}.
  *
@@ -106,30 +119,74 @@ public void processElement(ProcessContext c) {
   /**
    * A {@link CombineFn} that counts elements.
    */
-  private static class CountFn<T> extends CombineFn<T, Long, Long> {
+  private static class CountFn<T> extends CombineFn<T, long[], Long> {
+    // Note that the long[] accumulator always has size 1, used as
+    // a box for a mutable long.
 
     @Override
-    public Long createAccumulator() {
-      return 0L;
+    public long[] createAccumulator() {
+      return new long[] {0};
     }
 
     @Override
-    public Long addInput(Long accumulator, T input) {
-      return accumulator + 1;
+    public long[] addInput(long[] accumulator, T input) {
+      accumulator[0] += 1;
+      return accumulator;
     }
 
     @Override
-    public Long mergeAccumulators(Iterable<Long> accumulators) {
-      long result = 0L;
-      for (Long accum : accumulators) {
-        result += accum;
+    public long[] mergeAccumulators(Iterable<long[]> accumulators) {
+      Iterator<long[]> iter = accumulators.iterator();
+      if (!iter.hasNext()) {
+        return createAccumulator();
       }
-      return result;
+      long[] running = iter.next();
+      while (iter.hasNext()) {
+        running[0] += iter.next()[0];
+      }
+      return running;
     }
 
     @Override
-    public Long extractOutput(Long accumulator) {
-      return accumulator;
+    public Long extractOutput(long[] accumulator) {
+      return accumulator[0];
+    }
+
+    @Override
+    public Coder<long[]> getAccumulatorCoder(CoderRegistry registry,
+                                             Coder<T> inputCoder) {
+      return new CustomCoder<long[]>() {
+        @Override
+        public void encode(long[] value, OutputStream outStream, Context context)
+            throws IOException {
+          VarInt.encode(value[0], outStream);
+        }
+
+        @Override
+        public long[] decode(InputStream inStream, Context context)
+            throws IOException, CoderException {
+          try {
+            return new long[] {VarInt.decodeLong(inStream)};
+          } catch (EOFException | UTFDataFormatException exn) {
+            throw new CoderException(exn);
+          }
+        }
+
+        @Override
+        public boolean isRegisterByteSizeObserverCheap(long[] value, Context context) {
+          return true;
+        }
+
+        @Override
+        protected long getEncodedElementByteSize(long[] value, Context context) {
+          return VarInt.getLength(value[0]);
+        }
+
+        @Override
+        public String getEncodingId() {
+          return "VarLongSingletonArray";
+        }
+      };
     }
   }
 }