Most common word finder
Find the one word that dominates a passage: in the cat and the hat and the cat, the appears 3 times out of 8 words. Capitals are ignored, so The and the count together. Ideal for repetition and keyword checks. Free in your browser.
- Free
- Runs in your browser
- No sign-up
- Your data stays on your device
Run — free
Worked example
- Text
- the cat and the hat and the cat
- Word
- the
- Quantity
- 3
- Total words
- 8
- Unique words
- 4
Writers, editors, SEO analysts, and teachers often need one quick answer: which single word dominates this passage, and how many times does it appear? A full frequency table is useful for deep analysis, but for a fast keyword and repetition check you only need the top word and its count. This most common word finder accepts plain text, tokenizes words with Unicode letter and digit support (including internal apostrophes such as don't), folds case so Hello and hello count as the same token, and returns the winning word, its absolute count, total words, unique words, and share of the stream. Ties break alphabetically for a stable, reproducible result.
What “most common word” means and how the winner is chosen
The most common word in a document is the token that appears more times than any other after a consistent definition of “word” and of equality between tokens. This capability defines a word as a maximal run of Unicode letters or digits, optionally joined by an internal apostrophe so contractions and names such as don't or O'Brien stay one token. Punctuation, symbols, and bare whitespace separate tokens and never count as words.
Case is ignored: the algorithm lowercases every token before counting, so THE, The, and the all increment the same bucket. When two or more words share that peak frequency, it returns the lexicographically smallest lowercased form, which makes the result deterministic across runtimes and easy to pin in tests. Share is count divided by total token count, rounded to six decimal places, so you can express dominance as a fraction of the passage without a second pass.
Where a most common word finder earns its keep
Content teams use a most common word finder to spot unintentional repetition before publish: if a brand name or filler word dominates the draft, the count and share give an instant red flag without opening a spreadsheet. SEO and landing-page reviews check whether the target keyword is actually the top token or whether stopwords still own the page. Classroom and writing-lab tools let students paste essays and see which word they over-rely on, supporting revision goals about variety.
Support and product teams scan tickets or release notes for the single dominant term when building quick tag suggestions. Keep requests under the character limit, pin the lowercased winner and count in automated tests, and you get a reproducible keyword and repetition check for CMS plugins, LMS homework, edge workers, and batch scripts without standing up a full text-analytics stack.
What you can do with it
Draft repetition checks for writers
Paste a blog post or essay and see which single word appears most often so you can cut filler or vary vocabulary before publish.
Quick SEO keyword presence
Confirm whether a target term is the top token on a landing page, or whether common stopwords still dominate the copy.
Classroom and LMS writing labs
Let students submit a paragraph and receive a deterministic top-word report for revision exercises on word variety.
FAQ
How does the most common word finder work?
It tokenizes your text into Unicode letter/digit words (with internal apostrophes), lowercases each token, counts frequencies, and returns the word with the highest count. Ties break alphabetically.
Is matching case-sensitive?
No. Matching is always case-insensitive: Hello and hello count as the same word. The returned word is the lowercased form.
What if two words appear the same number of times?
The capability returns a single winner: among tied peak counts, the lexicographically smallest lowercased word is chosen so results stay stable and testable.
What counts as a word?
Runs of Unicode letters or digits, optionally with internal apostrophes (don't, O'Brien). Punctuation and symbols only separate tokens; they are not counted.
Are common words like the and and left out?
No. Every word counts, which is why a short article or connector can win. That is useful on its own: it tells you whether your target keyword really leads the page or filler words still do.
Related tools
For developers — API access
Everything on this page is available programmatically. This section is for teams who want to wire it into their own systems; everyone else can just use the tool above.
API endpoint
Prefer to automate it? One authenticated POST creates the task; the result comes back by webhook or a signed link. The same capability also runs here on the web, by email and from Telegram — and soon from our app too.
Call it from your stack
curl -X POST https://api.kit.forhosting.com/str/most-common-word \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $KIT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"text":"the cat and the hat and the cat"}'const res = await fetch("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/str/most-common-word", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.KIT_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify({
"text": "the cat and the hat and the cat"
})
});
const { task_id } = await res.json();import os, requests
res = requests.post(
"https://api.kit.forhosting.com/str/most-common-word",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['KIT_KEY']}"},
json={
"text": "the cat and the hat and the cat"
},
)
task_id = res.json()["task_id"]<?php
$res = file_get_contents("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/str/most-common-word", false, stream_context_create([
"http" => [
"method" => "POST",
"header" => "Authorization: Bearer " . getenv("KIT_KEY") . "\r\nContent-Type: application/json",
"content" => '{"text":"the cat and the hat and the cat"}',
],
]));
$task = json_decode($res, true);body := bytes.NewBufferString(`{"text":"the cat and the hat and the cat"}`)
req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.kit.forhosting.com/str/most-common-word", body)
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("KIT_KEY"))
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)Example request
{
"text": "the cat and the hat and the cat"
}Example response
{
"task_id": "tsk_a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6",
"type": "str.most_common_word",
"status": "queued",
"_links": {
"result": "/tasks/tsk_…/result"
}
}The API is asynchronous: the call returns a task_id immediately and the result arrives by webhook. Polling is capped at 1 req/s per task.
Pricing
Published price — no tokens, no invented credits. A failed task is never charged.
Limits
max_chars | 100000 |
Errors
| HTTP | Code | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
401 | unauthorized | Missing or invalid API key. |
402 | insufficient_balance | Your balance doesn't cover the task price. |
404 | unknown_type | That task type doesn't exist. |
429 | rate_limited | Too many requests. Use the webhook instead of polling. |
Technical notes
What “most common word” means and how the winner is chosen
Empty strings, whitespace-only input, and text that contains no letter or digit tokens fail with invalid_input rather than inventing a hollow success payload.
Input contract, response shape, and error behaviour
Finite numbers and bigints are accepted and stringified; objects, arrays, booleans, Infinity, and NaN are rejected. POST a JSON body with one required field: text, a non-empty string (aliases include input, string, value, content, and s). Length is capped at one hundred thousand characters to keep browser and Worker scans bounded. On success the body includes word (the lowercased winner), count (how many times it appears), total_words (all tokens after tokenization), unique_words (distinct lowercased keys), share (count over total_words to six decimals), and method set to most_common_word for pipeline tagging. Example: the cat and the hat and the cat yields word the with count three, total_words eight, unique_words four, and share zero point three seven five. Missing text, empty text, whitespace-only text, over-length text, and punctuation-only text fail with invalid_input and are not billed. Pair this endpoint with a full frequency table tool when you need every rank, or with an overused-word detector when you care about a threshold across many words; this finder answers only the single-peak question for speed and clarity.
Technical questions
What does the most common word finder cost?
The browser tool is free. API requests use prepaid KIT balance at $0.002 per successful call; invalid input is not billed.