Word Frequency Counter
Use this free Word Frequency Counter to see how often each word appears in your text. View word counts, percentages, unique words, and sort the results instantly.
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Word Frequency Table
| Word | Occurrences | Percentage |
|---|
How to Use the Word Frequency Counter
Type or paste your text into the box above. The Word Frequency Counter analyzes the text automatically and displays how many times each word occurs.
The frequency table shows each word, its number of occurrences, and its percentage of the analyzed words. You can sort the results by highest frequency, original order, lowest frequency, alphabetically from A-Z, or from Z-A.
By default, uppercase and lowercase versions of the same word are combined. You can count them separately by enabling Count uppercase and lowercase separately .
You can also select Exclude common words (the, and, of, to, etc.) to remove frequently used English words from the analysis. This can make important or descriptive words easier to identify.
What Is a Word Frequency Counter?
A word frequency counter measures how often each word occurs in a piece of text. Instead of only showing the total number of words, it breaks the text down word by word so you can see which words appear most often.
For example, if a document contains 100 words and the word writing appears five times, that word has five occurrences and represents 5% of the analyzed words.
Word frequency analysis can help identify repeated words, commonly used vocabulary, important terms, and patterns that may be difficult to notice by simply reading the text.
How Is Word Frequency Calculated?
Word frequency can be shown as a raw occurrence count or as a percentage of all words included in the analysis.
If a word appears 12 times in text containing 200 analyzed words, its word frequency is 6%.
Word Frequency Example
Consider the sentence: “The dog saw the cat and the dog ran.”
With uppercase and lowercase combined, the word the appears three times and dog appears twice.
| Word | Occurrences | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| the | 3 | 33.3% |
| dog | 2 | 22.2% |
| saw | 1 | 11.1% |
| cat | 1 | 11.1% |
| and | 1 | 11.1% |
| ran | 1 | 11.1% |
| Total | 9 | 100% |
What Does the Word Frequency Percentage Mean?
The percentage column shows how much of the analyzed text is represented by each word. This provides more context than an occurrence count alone.
A word appearing 20 times may be very common in a 100-word document but relatively uncommon in a 10,000-word document. Word frequency percentage makes it easier to compare word usage across texts of different lengths.
What Does Unique Words Mean?
Unique Words shows how many different words appear in the analyzed text. Repeated occurrences of the same word count only once toward the unique-word total.
For example, the text “red blue red green red” contains five words but only three unique words: red, blue, and green.
When common words are excluded, those words are also removed from the displayed word total, unique-word total, and frequency percentages.
Case-Sensitive vs. Case-Insensitive Word Frequency
By default, uppercase and lowercase versions of a word are combined. For example, Word, word, and WORD are treated as the same word.
Enable Count uppercase and lowercase separately when capitalization matters. In case-sensitive mode, those variations are counted as separate entries.
Case-sensitive word frequency can be useful when analyzing names, headings, titles, technical text, or other writing where capitalization carries meaning.
Why Exclude Common Words?
Common English words such as the, and, of, to, and in naturally appear frequently in writing. These are sometimes called stop words.
When you are looking for the main vocabulary or subject matter in a document, these common words can dominate the top of a word frequency table. Selecting Exclude common words (the, and, of, to, etc.) removes them from the analysis so more meaningful words are easier to see.
Leave the option turned off when you want a complete frequency analysis that includes common English words.
Find Repeated and Overused Words
A Word Frequency Counter can make repeated words easier to spot. Sorting by Highest Frequency places the most frequently occurring words at the top of the table.
This can be helpful when editing essays, articles, stories, reports, and other writing. If a descriptive word appears unusually often, you may decide to replace some occurrences with more varied language.
Repetition is not always a problem. Writers may intentionally repeat important words for emphasis, consistency, rhythm, or clarity. The frequency table gives you the data so you can decide whether the repetition is intentional.
What Is Word Frequency Analysis Used For?
Word frequency analysis is useful whenever you want to understand which words occur most often in a piece of text.
- Writing and editing: identify repeated or overused words.
- Research: examine recurring terms and vocabulary in documents or source material.
- Text analysis: compare the distribution of words across different samples of writing.
- Content analysis: identify prominent words and topics in articles, reports, transcripts, or other text.
- Data analysis: download word counts and percentages as a CSV file for further analysis.
Word Frequency vs. Word Count
A word count tells you the total number of words in a piece of text. Word frequency goes further by showing which words occur, how often each word appears, and the percentage of the text represented by each word.
If you mainly need the overall number of words and other general text statistics, use our Word Counter .
How Does the Counter Handle Punctuation?
Punctuation that surrounds a word is not counted as part of the word itself. This means a word at the end of a sentence can still be matched with the same word used elsewhere in the text.
The counter is designed to recognize normal word forms in text, including words containing common internal apostrophes. Accented and other Unicode letters can also be analyzed rather than being limited to only A-Z.
Download Word Frequency Results as CSV
Select Download as CSV to save the word frequency results in a comma-separated values file.
The CSV includes each word, its occurrence count, and its percentage frequency. You can open the file in spreadsheet software for additional sorting, analysis, charts, or other processing.
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Word Frequency Counter FAQ
What is word frequency?
Word frequency is the number of times a particular word occurs in a piece of text. It can be shown as an occurrence count or as a percentage of all analyzed words.
Does the Word Frequency Counter update automatically?
Yes. The results update automatically as you type or paste text into the textarea.
Can I sort words by frequency?
Yes. You can sort the results by highest frequency, original order, lowest frequency, A-Z, or Z-A.
What are unique words?
Unique Words is the number of different words found in the analyzed text. Multiple occurrences of the same word count as one unique word.
Can uppercase and lowercase words be counted separately?
Yes. Enable Count uppercase and lowercase separately to treat differently capitalized forms as separate words.
Can I exclude common words such as “the” and “and”?
Yes. Select Exclude common words (the, and, of, to, etc.) to remove frequently used English words from the frequency table, word total, and percentage calculations.
Can I download the word frequency results?
Yes. Select Download as CSV to save the word frequency table as a CSV file that can be opened in spreadsheet software.
Does punctuation count as part of a word?
Punctuation surrounding a word is not counted as part of the word. Normal internal apostrophes can remain part of a word when appropriate.
Does the counter support accented words?
Yes. The counter can recognize letters beyond basic A-Z, allowing words containing accented and other Unicode letters to be included in the analysis.
What is the difference between word count and word frequency?
Word count measures the total number of words in text. Word frequency shows how often each individual word occurs and what percentage of the analyzed words it represents.