Word frequency counter

The tool counts every word in your text and lists them from most to least frequent:

(That's the result for the sample text in the box: The cat sat on the mat. The cat saw a dog, and the dog saw the cat. Cats and dogs are popular pets.)

Above the table you see four summary numbers: words counted, unique words, the most frequent word with its count, and how many words are used only once. Words with equal counts are listed alphabetically.

The table shows the top 50 words by default; change Show the top … words to any number, or 0 to show them all. The first 200 rows are displayed on the page, and Download table saves the complete list as a CSV file you can open in Excel or Google Sheets.

• Skip common words (on by default) leaves out English stop words: articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and forms of be, have and do (the, a, and, of, to, in, is, it, you, that…). These dominate every text and usually hide the interesting words.
• Merge upper- and lowercase (on by default) counts The and the as the same word.
• Minimum word length ignores very short words, for example set 3 to skip two-letter words.
• Show the top … words limits the table length.

The share column is calculated from the words that were counted, so it changes when you skip common words or raise the minimum length.

The counter matches exact word forms. Cat, cats and cat's are three different entries, and so are run, runs, running and ran. This keeps the results transparent, but for some purposes you may want to add related forms together by hand.

Hyphenated words (well-known) and contractions (don't) count as single words, as in the word counter. Numbers count as words too; raise the minimum length or ignore them in the table if they get in the way.

• Writing and editing. Spot overused words and repetitive phrasing in essays, reports and fiction. If really or very is in your top ten, it's time to edit.
• SEO and content. Check which terms a page actually emphasizes and compare with the keyword you want to rank for. Keep it natural: there is no magic keyword density to aim for.
• Research. Get a quick overview of survey answers, interview transcripts or customer reviews.
• Language learning. Find the most common words in a text you're studying and learn those first.
• Puzzles. Frequency analysis is the classic way to crack substitution ciphers; see the Caesar cipher tool.

To find repeated words next to each other (like the the), use remove duplicate words.

Counting happens in your browser. The text, the table and the CSV file are created on your computer, and nothing is uploaded.