How to use the letter frequency counter
- Paste or type your text into the box.
- Choose to order the letters by most used first or A to Z, and whether to count accented letters as plain ones.
- Turn on List letters with no uses to see all 26 letters.
- Read the letters counted, the most used letter, the vowel share and the table with rank, count, share and a bar for each letter. Copy the counts as text.
What is counted
The page counts the 26 letters A to Z, with capital and lowercase letters together. With accented letters folded, an é counts as an E and a ñ as an N. Digits, spaces and punctuation are not letters, so they are tallied separately as other characters, and spaces are not counted at all. Letters from other alphabets, such as Greek or Cyrillic, are not counted here.
The share is each letter's count divided by the number of letters counted, not by the length of the text. Letters with the same count share a rank, and ties are listed alphabetically. The vowel share counts A, E, I, O and U only, so Y is treated as a consonant.
A worked example
In The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, and then it naps in the warm afternoon sun the page counts 69 letters and finds all 26 different letters, since the sentence begins with a pangram. N is the most used with 8 uses, which is 11.59% of the letters. E, O and T follow with 6 each, and vowels make up 33.3% of the total. Two other characters, the comma and the period, are reported separately.
Letter counts are a classic tool for simple substitution ciphers. In long English text, E, T, A, O and N tend to be the most common, so a cipher letter that appears most often is often E. A short text, like this one, can differ a lot from that pattern. The Caesar Cipher and the Vigenere Cipher Tool make and break such codes, and the Cryptogram Maker builds puzzles.
Other uses and privacy
Counts also help with word games, typography, keyboard layout work and checking that a text sample is balanced. To count whole words instead, use the Word Frequency Counter, and for general counts of words and characters the Word Counter. Everything runs in your browser and nothing you paste is uploaded.
Assumptions and limits
- Only A to Z are counted, in either case. Accented letters are folded to plain letters when that option is on.
- Spaces are ignored. Digits and punctuation are counted as other characters.
- Up to 1,000,000 characters are read. Percents are shown to two decimals.
- Nothing is uploaded or stored.
Frequently asked questions
How do I count how often each letter appears?
Paste the text into the box. The page shows each letter with its count and share, ranked from most used, and the most used letter and the vowel share.
Does it count capital and lowercase letters separately?
No. A and a are counted together as A. The page counts letters, not case.
Are accented letters counted?
Yes, when Count accented letters as plain is on. Then é counts as E and ü as U. With the option off, accented letters are not counted as letters and show up in other characters.
Why do some letters share a rank?
Letters with the same count get the same rank. In the example E, O and T all appear 6 times, so they all rank second, and ties are listed in alphabetical order.