Character Frequency Counter

About Character Frequency Counter

Counting how often each character appears is one of the oldest tools for studying text. Code breakers use it to crack simple ciphers, because in ordinary English e, t and a are the most common letters. Writers and teachers use it to look at the make-up of a text, and developers use it to find odd or hidden characters in data. This counter ranks every character from the most to the least common.

Each row shows the character, how many times it appears and what share of the total it makes up. Characters are counted the way people see them, so an accented letter, an emoji and a character from another alphabet each count once. Spaces and tabs are named so you can see them. The summary also reports vowels and consonants, counting accented vowels as vowels and leaving letters from other alphabets out of both counts. You can fold capitals into small letters, count letters only, include spaces and count y as a vowel.

How to use Character Frequency Counter

1. Paste your text into the box.
2. Choose whether capitals count the same as small letters, and whether to count letters only or spaces too.
3. Read the summary figures and the table, which shows the most common characters first.
4. Copy the full list if you need every character.

Common uses

• Solving a simple substitution cipher by looking at letter frequencies
• Checking the make-up of a text, such as how many vowels it has
• Finding stray symbols or unusual characters in pasted data
• Setting word puzzles and language exercises