free tool, no sign-up
Word Cloud Generator
Create visual word clouds from any text. Words appear larger based on frequency—perfect for brainstorming, book reports, vocabulary review, and visual presentations.
Enter text and click
"Generate Word Cloud" to create your cloud
The Word Cloud Generator transforms text into beautiful visual displays where word size reflects frequency. Paste any text—an essay, book chapter, speech, or word list—and instantly generate a colorful cloud. More frequently used words appear larger, making patterns and themes visually obvious. Perfect for analyzing writing, summarizing book themes, brainstorming sessions, classroom displays, or creating engaging visuals for presentations. Customize colors, exclude common words, and download your cloud as an image.
How the word cloud is built from your text
Paste a paragraph, an essay, a speech, a book blurb or a plain list of words into the box and press Generate Word Cloud. The text is lowercased, punctuation and numbers are stripped out, and every remaining word is counted. The most common words come out biggest, so the themes in a piece of writing show up as shape and size rather than as a table of numbers.
Type size runs from 16px for the rarest word on the canvas up to 64px for the most frequent one, with everything in between scaled to where it falls in that range. If every word appears exactly once, which is what happens when you paste a vocabulary list, they all land at the same middle size and you get an even collage instead of a ranked one. That is usually what you want for a spelling list on the wall.
The label above the text box keeps a live count of the words that will actually be used, so you can see straight away whether a short paragraph has enough in it. Around 80 to 150 words of real text gives a cloud with a clear winner; much less than that and most words tie at one occurrence.
Controls that change what the cloud looks like
There are seven colour schemes: Rainbow, Ocean, Sunset, Forest, Purple, Monochrome and Pastel. Monochrome is the one to pick if the cloud is going into a photocopied handout or you are printing on a black and white laser printer, since the greys stay readable where bright colours turn to mud. Pastel sits behind handwriting well if children are going to annotate the sheet.
Max Words caps the cloud at 25, 50, 75 or 100 entries. Twenty-five keeps a display-board cloud legible from across a room; 100 suits a dense text analysis you will look at close up. Min Word Length filters out anything shorter than 2, 3, 4 or 5 letters, which is a quick way to drop stray initials and single letters left behind by the punctuation stripping.
The exclude-common-words checkbox is on by default and removes roughly 100 English function words such as the, and, is, was, this and which. Leave it on for nearly everything, and turn it off only if those words are the point, for example when you are showing a class how much of a page is taken up by glue words. Allow rotated words turns about three in ten words on their side at 90 degrees, which fills the space more tightly; switch it off if the cloud is for a young reader who is still decoding left to right.
Printing, saving and sharing the finished cloud
Print opens a clean page with just the cloud on it, centred, with 15mm margins and a small atc21s.org line at the bottom. Colours are forced to print rather than being dropped to grey, so tick the background graphics option in your printer dialog if your browser has hidden it. The layout reflows to whatever paper you feed it, so US Letter and A4 both work without a scaling step.
Download Image saves a PNG at twice screen resolution on a white background, named word-cloud.png. That file is large enough to drop into a slide deck, a newsletter or a Google Doc without going soft, and the white background means it sits properly on a light page rather than arriving as a transparent block.
Shuffle Colors redraws the same words with a different colour from the scheme and a fresh set of rotations, so you can press it a few times until the arrangement looks right without retyping anything. Regenerate rebuilds the cloud from the text box, which is what you want after editing the text or changing an option.
Ways teachers and parents use a word cloud
The most common classroom use is the end of a topic. Ask a class to call out everything they remember about the Romans or the water cycle, type the answers in as they come, and the words the whole room said get big on their own. It makes a good display and it shows you at a glance which vocabulary actually stuck.
It also works as a quiet piece of self-assessment on writing. Paste a child's own story in and the repeated words jump out: said, then, nice, and. Older students can do this themselves before a redraft, which is a far less painful conversation than a teacher circling the same word twenty times in red pen.
Other things it handles well: a front page for a book report built from the chapter's key words, a name cloud for a birthday card or a staff leaving gift, a starting point for a brainstorm that you print and stick in the middle of a planning sheet, and a quick word splash for a new topic that you hand out at the start of the week. Four sample texts are built in under the Load sample text menu if you want to see the output before typing anything of your own.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a word cloud?
A word cloud is a picture made of the words in a piece of text, where the words used most often are drawn largest. It is a quick visual summary that shows the main themes of a document without anyone having to read all of it.
Is this word cloud generator free?
Yes. There is no account, no sign-up and no watermark on the image beyond a small atc21s.org line on the printed page. You can make as many clouds as you like.
How do I make a word cloud from my own text?
Paste or type your text into the box, choose a colour scheme and a maximum number of words, then press Generate Word Cloud. The cloud appears on the right and can be printed or downloaded straight away.
Can I download the word cloud as an image?
Yes. The Download Image button saves it as a PNG at double resolution on a white background, which is sharp enough for slides, printed newsletters or a class website.
Why are some common words missing from my cloud?
The exclude-common-words option is switched on by default and removes function words such as the, and, is and this so the meaningful words have room. Untick that checkbox if you want every word counted.
How much text do I need for a good word cloud?
About 80 to 150 words is enough for a clear size difference between the common and rare words. With a short list where every word appears once, all the words come out the same size, which still looks good as a word collage.
Can I use a list of words instead of a paragraph?
Yes, and it is a common way to use it. Put each word on its own line or separate them with spaces; repeat a word twice if you want it drawn bigger than the rest.
Does the word cloud print in colour?
It does, and the print page forces background colours on so they are not dropped to grey. If you are printing in black and white, pick the Monochrome scheme first so the words stay readable.