Word Frequency Counter
Paste any text to see which words and phrases appear most often, with counts and percentages. Filter out common stopwords, then turn the result into a word cloud you can download as a PNG.
Most frequent words
| # | Word | Count | % of all words | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paste some text to see its word frequencies. | ||||
Word cloud
How to use the Word Frequency Counter
- Paste your text into the box, or press Sample to try an example.
- Choose what to count: single words or two- and three-word phrases, and how letter case is treated.
- Set the filters: stopwords, minimum word length, numbers and any extra words to exclude.
- Press Count words to see the most frequent words with counts and percentages.
- Export or visualize: download the CSV, or style the word cloud and press Download PNG.
Worked example: counting words in a short text
Take the text “The cat sat on the mat. The cat ran! A dog, a cat and the dog played.” It has 17 words and 10 different words.
| Word | Count | % of all words | Kept with stopword filter? |
|---|---|---|---|
| the | 4 | 23.53% | No (stopword) |
| cat | 3 | 17.65% | Yes |
| a | 2 | 11.76% | No (stopword) |
| dog | 2 | 11.76% | Yes |
| sat, mat, ran, played | 1 each | 5.88% | Yes |
| on, and | 1 each | 5.88% | No (stopword) |
The formula is percentage = count ÷ total words × 100, so “cat” is 3 ÷ 17 × 100 = 17.65%. With stopwords filtered out, 8 of the 17 words are counted and “cat” is the top word.
Single words or phrases?
Single words tell you the main topics of a text. Two- and three-word phrases (also called n-grams or bigrams and trigrams) show how you actually use those words, for example “customer support” or “free shipping offer”. Phrases are only counted inside a sentence, and a phrase is skipped when it starts or ends with a stopword, so you get “garden journal” rather than “the garden”.
Ways to use word frequencies
- Editing: spot words you repeat too often (just, really, very, actually) and vary your wording.
- SEO: check keyword density. A main keyword usually sits around 0.5–2% of the words; much higher can read as keyword stuffing.
- Research: compare speeches, interviews or survey answers to see which themes come up most.
- Language learning: list the most common words in a book chapter and learn those first.
- Presentations: a word cloud is a quick, visual summary of a document or a batch of feedback.
Frequently asked questions
How is the percentage calculated?
Each word's count is divided by the total number of words in the text, including stopwords and other filtered words, and multiplied by 100. For phrases, the count is divided by the total number of phrases of that length. That makes the percentage the same as keyword density.
What are stopwords?
Stopwords are very common words such as the, and, of, is and you that appear in almost every text and say little about its topic. Filtering them out lets the meaningful words rise to the top. Untick the filter to count every word.
How does the tool split text into words?
It uses your browser's built-in Unicode word segmentation (Intl.Segmenter), so accented letters, apostrophes in words like don't and non-Latin scripts are handled correctly. Older browsers fall back to a Unicode-aware pattern.
Do phrases cross sentence boundaries?
No. Two- and three-word phrases are only counted inside a run of words that is not interrupted by punctuation such as a full stop, comma, colon or bracket, so "end. Start" is never counted as a phrase.
How is the word cloud laid out?
Words are sized by frequency and placed one by one, biggest first, along a spiral that starts in the center. Each word is checked against every word already placed, so they never overlap. Shuffle layout tries a different arrangement.
Is my text uploaded?
No. All counting and drawing happens in your browser. Your text never leaves your device, so it is safe for drafts, contracts or private notes.