Word Frequency Counter
Paste a text and get every word ranked by how often it appears, with a count, a percentage and a bar for each. Common words like the, and and of are hidden by default so the words that carry your subject rise to the top, and one click switches them back on. Free, no sign-up, and nothing is uploaded.
How to Use the Word Frequency Counter
- Paste your text. An essay, article, transcript, survey answers or any other writing in English.
- Decide on stop words. The box is ticked at first, which hides 84 very common words. Untick it to see every word, including the, of and is.
- Read the summary cards. Total words, unique words and your top word appear above the table.
- Scan the table. Words are ranked by count with each one's share of the counted words. The first 25 show first; use Show all to see the rest.
How Words Are Counted
Before counting, the text is converted to lower case, so Cities and cities are one word. A word is a run of letters (in any alphabet, accented letters included), digits and apostrophes, so café stays whole and don't and don’t, with a straight or a curly apostrophe, are the same word. A hyphen between two letters stays inside the word, so well-known is one entry, while a dash with a space around it, an unspaced dash, a slash, a full stop or the dots and slashes in a web address end the word. Single-letter words are dropped. Numbers count as words, and a figure with a comma or point in it, such as 10,000 or 3.5, stays whole.
The tool does not group word forms. Plan, plans and planning are three separate entries, as are city and cities. The stop-word list is English, so for text in another language untick the box. Text in scripts written without spaces, such as Chinese or Japanese, comes out as long runs rather than separate words.
A Worked Example
Take this 36-word text: Climate change is changing how cities plan for water. Cities that plan early adapt faster, and cities that ignore climate risks pay more later. Water planning is now a core part of climate policy in 2024. With stop words hidden, the table shows:
| Rank | Word | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | climate | 3 | 12.0% |
| 2 | cities | 3 | 12.0% |
| 3 | plan | 2 | 8.0% |
| 4 | water | 2 | 8.0% |
| 5–19 | change, changing, early, adapt and 11 more | 1 each | 4.0% |
The cards read 36 total words, 19 unique words and climate as the top word. The percentages are out of 25, not 36: that is the 36 words minus the 10 stop words and the single-letter word a, which are not counted. The numeral 2024 is counted, as a word of its own. Untick the box and the counted total becomes 35 (everything except a), so climate falls to 8.6%.
Notice what the table shows about the writing: climate and cities share the top rank, and plan, planning and water make a second group around the subject. A frequency list is a fast way to see what a text is actually about, and whether a word you meant to stress, or one you overuse, really leads.
What Frequency Lists Are Used For
- Revising your own writing. Spot a pet word such as very, really or important before a reader does.
- Finding themes. Run interview transcripts, open-ended survey answers or a set of abstracts to see which terms recur.
- Checking emphasis. If the main concept of your essay is not among your top content words, the argument may not be centred where you think.
- Studying vocabulary. The words that top a reading passage are the ones worth learning first.
Which Tool Do You Need?
| If you want… | Use |
|---|---|
| Counts for every word, ranked | This page |
| Keyword density as a percentage, with phrase tabs and warning bands | Keyword Density Analyzer |
| Repeated two- and three-word phrases | Phrase Frequency Counter |
| Words repeated close together | Word Repetition Checker |
| A picture of frequent words | Word Cloud Generator |
| The vocabulary variety score | Lexical Diversity Calculator |
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do I count how many times a word appears in a text?
- Paste the text and look the word up in the table. With stop words hidden, very common words such as the will not be listed, so untick the box first if you are looking for one of them.
- What are stop words and why are they hidden?
- Stop words are very common function words — the, and, of, is, to — that fill most texts without saying what they are about. This tool hides 84 of them by default, so the table starts with the content words. Untick the option to count them too.
- Why do the total words not match the percentages?
- The Total words card counts everything separated by spaces, including numbers, stop words and lone symbols such as a dash. The percentages in the table are shares of the words actually counted, which excludes single letters, symbols with no letter or digit in them and, if the box is ticked, stop words.
- Does it count plural and verb forms together?
- No. Each spelling is its own entry, so plan, plans and planned are counted separately. If you want to see a family, add the counts yourself or search for the stem with a concordance tool.
- Are numbers and accented letters counted?
- Yes. Letters from any alphabet count, accents included, so café is one word, and digits count too, so 2024 and 10,000 appear in the table. An apostrophe or a hyphen between letters stays inside the word, which keeps don't and well-known whole. The stop-word list is English, so for another language untick the box.
- What is a good word frequency for an essay?
- There is no target. The point is to check that your topic words lead and that no filler word does. If a word you did not intend dominates the list, vary it in your next edit.
- Is my text sent anywhere?
- No. The words are counted in your browser and the text is not uploaded or stored.