How to Make a Word Cloud from Text (Free)

To make a word cloud, open the Word Cloud Generator, choose Count words in text, and paste your text — customer feedback, open survey answers, meeting notes, a speech. The most frequent words appear biggest; common words like "the" and "and" are left out automatically. Choose the shape and how many words are rotated, then download the cloud.

Make a word cloud step by step

1. Open the Word Cloud Generator.
2. Under Words, choose:
   • Count words in text — paste any text and words are counted for you.
   • Word list — type word, weight per line to control the sizes exactly.
3. Keep Remove common words (the, and, of…) on, and type any other words in Also exclude (for example your company or product name, which would otherwise dominate). Set the Shortest word (letters) and Maximum words if needed.
4. Under Layout, choose the Shape — Rectangle or Oval — and Vertical words: None — all horizontal, Some (about 1 in 4) or Half.
5. Pick the colours, then download a PNG, JPG or SVG.

How words are counted

• Capital letters don't matter: "Price" and "price" are counted together, shown in their most common spelling — so names stay capitalised.
• Possessives merge: "customer's" counts as "customer".
• Common English words are left out (the, and, of, is…). Turn that off, or add your own words to exclude.
• Other languages work too — Chinese, Japanese and Thai text is split into words automatically.
• Every word fits: with many words, the whole cloud scales down rather than dropping words.

What word clouds are good for

• A quick read of themes in hundreds of open-ended answers: "slow", "price", "support" jumping out tells you where to look.
• Presentation slides and posters — a striking visual of a speech, a book or a brand's values.
• Classroom activities — the key vocabulary of a text.
• Event recaps — what attendees said in feedback.

And what they're not good for

Word clouds are impressionistic. Size differences are hard to judge precisely, and words lose their context — "not good" becomes "good". For decisions, count the top words properly and show them in a bar chart, or read a sample of the answers. To summarise long documents properly, an AI summary of the text helps.

Tips for better clouds

• Exclude the obvious. In feedback about "Acme App", exclude "Acme" and "app".
• Combine variants before pasting: "log in", "login" and "log-in".
• Fewer rotated words are easier to read; Half looks more artistic.
• Use a word list for designed pieces — values for a company poster, a wedding word cloud with names biggest.

Word clouds and other charts

• To compare what different groups said — what fans of product A and product B both mention — list each group's top words in a Venn diagram.
• For exact counts of the top ten words, a sorted bar chart is the honest companion to a word cloud.

A worked example: customer feedback

Paste 300 answers to "What could we improve?". Exclude your product name, keep common words removed, and choose Some (about 1 in 4) vertical words. If "delivery", "slow" and "tracking" dominate, you know where to dig — then read the answers that mention them to understand the details.

Privacy

Your text stays in your browser — nothing is uploaded or stored. That's important for survey answers and internal feedback.

Frequently asked questions

How much text can I paste?

Thousands of words work fine — a whole report or hundreds of answers.

Can I make a word cloud in a custom shape?

The shapes are rectangle and oval.

Why is an important word missing?

It may be on the common-words list. Turn off the list or check the words to exclude.