🇩🇪 Free German test · 2 minutes
How many German words do you know?
Tick every word you could translate. Be honest — the estimate is only as good as your ticks.
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Why vocabulary size matters for reading
Comfortable reading starts when you know about 95% of the words on the page. Your vocabulary size tells you which books will feel like a story and which will feel like homework. Use the result to pick reading at the right level, then check any text with the German text difficulty checker, or start with the 300 most common German words.
Questions
How many German words do I need?
Roughly: 500–1,000 word forms for simple graded stories, 2,000–3,000 for comfortable intermediate reading, and 5,000–8,000+ for unadapted novels and news. Because each inflected form counts separately here, numbers for German run higher than "word family" counts you may see elsewhere.
How is my vocabulary estimated?
You see 60 words sampled from six frequency bands (top 500 up to rank 15,000). The share you know in each band is multiplied by the band size and summed — the standard way frequency-based vocabulary tests work.
Can I trust the result?
Only tick words you could actually translate. People tend to over-tick familiar-looking words; take the test twice and average if you want a steadier number.
What should I read at my level?
Graded readers built for your band. ReadNative's German books start at absolute beginner and climb chapter by chapter.