Character Frequency Counter
Count how often every character — or every word — appears in your text, ranked from most to least common with its share of the total. Nothing is uploaded.
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How to use it
- Paste your text into the box on the left.
- The table fills in as you type, most common first.
- Switch Count to Words to see repeated words instead of repeated letters.
- Press Copy as CSV to take the table into a spreadsheet.
What the three options actually change
Ignore case folds A and a into a
single row. Leave it on for normal reading, and turn it off when the
capitals themselves are the point — checking a password, a key, or how
often a sentence starts with the same letter.
Ignore spaces and line breaks is on by default for a simple reason: in ordinary prose the space always wins, by a distance, and learning that tells you nothing. Turn it off and spaces, tabs and line breaks appear in the table with readable labels, which is genuinely useful when you are inspecting a file rather than reading a paragraph. Ignore punctuation does the same for full stops, commas and brackets, leaving letters and numbers alone.
Where letter frequency is actually used
The classic use is puzzles. A substitution cipher hides which letter is
which but cannot hide how often each one appears, so the most common symbol
in an English message is almost always E, and the pattern from
there runs roughly T, A, O, I, N. That single fact is enough to break a
simple cipher by hand, and it is the foundation of every cryptogram solver.
The everyday uses are quieter. Word mode catches the word you have leaned on four times in one paragraph, which is the fastest edit you can make to your own writing. Character mode shows a stray character that should not be there at all — a smart quote in a code block, a non-breaking space in a spreadsheet column — long before it breaks something. If that is what you are chasing, the whitespace remover takes them out once you know they are there.
Frequently asked questions
Does it count spaces and line breaks?
It can. Untick Ignore spaces and line breaks and they appear in the table as (space), (tab) and (line break), labelled so you can actually see them. They are left out by default because in ordinary prose the space is always the winner and it tells you nothing.
Can it count words instead of characters?
Yes. Switch Count to Words and the same table shows which words you repeat most, with their share of the total. It is the fastest way to catch a word you have leaned on four times in one paragraph.
Why does E come top of almost every English text?
Because that is how English is built. Across ordinary English writing the order runs roughly E, T, A, O, I, N, and any long passage lands close to it. A text that departs sharply from that order is usually a list, code, or writing in another language.
Is my text sent anywhere?
No. The counting happens in JavaScript inside your own browser. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is saved — close the tab and the text is gone.