Word Frequency Counter

Paste text to rank its words by how often they occur, with each word's count and share of the total, plus total and unique word counts.

Unique words6

words

1 – 1000

Unique words

6

  • Total words12
  • Most frequentthe (4×)
  • Words used once2
  • Unique ÷ total50.0%
Top 6 of 6 words
RankWordCountShare of words
1the433.33%
2cat216.67%
3on216.67%
4sat216.67%
5dog18.33%
6mat18.33%

A word is a run of letters or digits in any script; apostrophes and hyphens inside a word keep it whole (don't, well-known). Languages written without spaces, such as Chinese or Japanese, are not segmented into words.

How this was calculated

Found 12 words and 6 distinct ones after lowercasing.

Share = count ÷ total words × 100, e.g. "the": 4 ÷ 12 × 100 = 33.33%.

How the count works

A word is a run of letters, combining marks or digits in any script. An apostrophe or hyphen between two letters keeps the word whole, so don't and well-known count as one word each.

Share = count ÷ total words × 100. With case ignored, The and the are the same word; with case-sensitive matching they are counted separately. Numbers can be excluded so that years and quantities do not crowd the list.

Worked example

"The cat sat on the mat. The dog sat on the cat." has 12 words and 6 distinct words. the appears 4 times, a 4 ÷ 12 × 100 = 33.33% share; cat, sat and on appear twice (16.67% each); mat and dog once.

Limits

Languages written without spaces between words, such as Chinese, Japanese and Thai, need dictionary-based segmentation, which this tool does not do; a run of such characters counts as one word. Stop words such as the and of are not removed, so they usually top the list.

How to use the Word Frequency Counter

Paste text and choose the counting options.

  1. Paste the text

    Type or paste up to 10,000 characters.

  2. Set options

    Choose whether to ignore letter case and numbers, and how many words to show.

  3. Read the table

    See each word's rank, count and share, with total and unique words.

References

Frequently asked questions

Is this the same as keyword density?

Yes for single words. Keyword density is a word's count divided by the total number of words, which is the share column.

Why does "the" rank first?

Short function words are the most common words in almost any English text. Scan past them, or lower the Show top number to focus on the leading words.

Can I export the results?

Yes. Use Download table CSV to save the ranked words, counts and shares.

Last updated . Results are estimates for informational purposes only.