How to use the Letter Frequency Counter
- Paste your text.
- Choose letters only or all characters, and whether case matters.
- Read the frequency table, sorted by count or alphabetically.
- Download the table as CSV if you need it.
Example
| Input | hello |
|---|---|
| Result | l — 2 (40%) · h — 1 · e — 1 · o — 1 |
What the counter shows
- The total number of characters counted and how many different characters were found.
- Vowels and consonants, counted for letters of the Latin alphabet. “Y” is counted as a consonant, and letters from other alphabets are counted in the totals but not as vowels or consonants.
- The most common character.
- A table of every character with its count, its percentage of the total and a small bar, so the biggest values stand out at a glance.
Use Download CSV to take the table into a spreadsheet.
Settings
- Letters only (on by default): counts only letters. Turn it off to include digits, punctuation, spaces and line breaks, which appear as ␣, ↵ and ⇥ so you can see them.
- Case-sensitive (off by default): when it is on, “A” and “a” are counted separately.
- Sort by: Most frequent, or Alphabetical.
What people use it for
- Cryptography and puzzles. Simple substitution ciphers can often be cracked by comparing letter frequencies with those of normal English, where E, T, A, O and N are the most common letters.
- Language study, comparing how often letters appear in different languages or texts.
- Writing games, Scrabble-style word puzzles and constrained writing.
- Checking text for unusual characters, such as stray symbols or digits.
- Teaching statistics and data visualisation with a real example.
Tips
- Use a longer text for reliable results. A single sentence can differ a lot from normal letter frequencies.
- Turn “Letters only” off to find invisible or odd characters hiding in text.
- For word and phrase frequency instead of letters, use the Keyword Density Checker.
- To count characters and spaces overall, use the Character Counter.
Frequently asked questions
What is letter frequency used for?
It is used in cryptography puzzles (like solving substitution ciphers), linguistics, word games, typing practice and checking text for unusual character use.
What is the most common letter in English?
In typical English text, E is the most common letter, followed by T, A, O, I and N.
Which letters are most common in English?
In typical English text the most frequent letters are E, T, A, O, I and N. Short texts can differ from this pattern.
Does it work with accented letters and other alphabets?
Yes. Letters from any alphabet are counted. The vowel and consonant totals only cover the basic Latin letters.