How Many Words Do You Need for Each CEFR Level?

Updated 2026-11-03 · Ellen Zhang Yarong

Short answer: for the 5,000 most frequent words in English, the best-known mapping is roughly — A1 under 1,500; A2 1,500–2,500; B1 2,750–3,250; B2 3,250–3,750; C1 3,750–4,500; C2 4,500–5,000. These come from learners who passed Cambridge exams at each level, tested with a yes/no checklist capped at 5,000 words (Milton, 2010, reporting Milton & Meara, 2003).

The table

| CEFR level | Words known (of the 5,000 most frequent) | What it usually means | |---|---|---| | A1 | under 1,500 | Survives set phrases, struggles with anything unscripted | | A2 | 1,500–2,500 | Handles routine transactions | | B1 | 2,750–3,250 | Holds a conversation, avoids what it cannot say | | B2 | 3,250–3,750 | Argues a point, reads news | | C1 | 3,750–4,500 | Reads most non-specialist text comfortably | | C2 | 4,500–5,000 | Near-complete command of high-frequency vocabulary |

Three caveats that matter more than the exact number

The test was capped at 5,000. So C2 means "at or above 5,000 on this instrument", not "5,000 words total". A literate adult's passive vocabulary in a second language is usually larger.

Ranges overlap. In Milton & Alexiou's data, the standard deviation at B1 was over 400 words, so B1 learners overlapped with both A2 and B2.

Vocabulary explains most, not all, of the level. Roughly 60–70% of the variation in CEFR level was explained by vocabulary size in the same data. The rest is grammar control, fluency, and what you can do with the words you have.

Where the "8,000 words" figure comes from

Reading unadapted text is a different bar. Nation (2006) estimated 8,000–9,000 word families for 98% coverage of written text — the point at which unknown words stop interrupting comprehension. Laufer and Ravenhorst-Kalovski (2010) put adequate comprehension at 4,000–5,000 families for 95% coverage.

So "how many words do I need" has two answers: 3,000–4,000 to converse at B1–B2, 8,000+ to read freely.

How to estimate your own

Take a frequency-ordered list of the 5,000 most common words in your target language and mark what you know, five at a time per page. Multiply out. It takes twenty minutes and is accurate to a few hundred words — far better than guessing from course completion.

Parse a text against CEFR levels to see which words sit above your level. Try a workout.

Testing yourself in twenty minutes

Open a frequency list for your target language — the 5,000 most common words, in order. Read five words per screen and mark which you could use in a sentence, not which look familiar.

Sample 200 words spread across the list rather than working straight through. Multiply the proportion you marked by 5,000. A result within a few hundred words of the bands above is normal; the instrument is coarse by design.

Run it again in three months. The number moves more slowly than your speaking ability does, which is why it is a useful check on the story you tell yourself about progress.

Do not treat the estimate as a placement result. A learner might recognise a word in a multiple-choice test but fail to use it in a sentence, while another may speak effectively with a smaller, well-rehearsed vocabulary. If your estimate and your real-world performance disagree, describe both rather than assuming one cancels the other out.

The published bands are tied to a particular test and a particular list of frequent English words. They are not a universal word requirement for every language, and they do not mean every person at the same CEFR level knows the same number. The original instrument stopped at 5,000 items, so a learner near its upper limit may know more than the test could measure. These are comparison points, not a vocabulary quota to complete before speaking.

Related reading

Sources