Count how often each letter from A to Z appears

How to use the letter frequency counter

1. Paste your text into Your text. A sample paragraph is already there to try.
2. Pick a Sort: By count puts the most common letter first; A → Z lists letters in alphabet order.
3. Tick Include letters that do not appear to see all 26 letters, including those with a count of 0.
4. Read the totals, the Letter counts chart and the Letter frequency table. Use Copy or CSV to take the table away.

What it does and when to use it

Letter frequency shows how often each letter is used. It is a simple idea with several practical uses:

• Code breaking and puzzles. Frequency analysis is the classic way to crack substitution ciphers and cryptograms.
• Word games. Check which letters are common in a word list before you design a game or puzzle.
• Language study. Compare letter use between languages or authors, or show pupils that some letters are far more common than others.
• Design work. Check which letters a headline or logo text uses most before choosing or testing a font.

This tool counts letters only. To count whole words instead, use word frequency. For overall totals such as characters, words and lines, the character counter is quicker.

How it works

The tool removes accents from the text (é becomes e), changes it to capitals and then counts each character that is one of the 26 letters A–Z. Everything else is skipped. For each letter:

Share = letter count ÷ total letters counted × 100, rounded to 2 decimal places.

The stats line shows Letters counted (the total), Distinct letters (how many of the 26 appear) and Most common. When two letters tie, the one earlier in the alphabet is named. With By count, ties are also listed in A–Z order. Everything is calculated in your browser.

Worked examples

These outputs come from the tool’s own function.

A short word. “Hello” has 5 letters. L appears twice, so its row reads L | 2 | 40%. E, H and O each get 20%.

A famous spelling. “Mississippi” has 11 letters. By count, the table reads I | 4 | 36.36%, S | 4 | 36.36%, P | 2 | 18.18% and M | 1 | 9.09%. I and S tie, so I comes first, and I is named as Most common.

Accents folded. “Ééa” sorted A → Z gives A once and E | 2 | 66.67%, because both É and é count as E.

Limits and tips

• Short texts give unstable shares. A sentence or two will not match the typical letter pattern of a language; use a few paragraphs or more for analysis.
• Shares are of letters only, not of all characters.
• Non-Latin scripts such as Cyrillic or Arabic are not counted.