Word Cloud Generator

Paste text and get a frequency-sized word cloud with spiral placement, five palettes and optional rotation. Export as PNG or SVG, all in your browser.

🌐 Español

🔒 Private by design: everything runs locally in your browser and never uploaded to any server.

Written and maintained by Last updated

A picture of what a text is about

A word cloud is a frequency chart that does not look like a chart. Size encodes count, and because size is something people read instantly without being taught, a cloud communicates the shape of a text faster than a table of numbers ever will.

That makes it genuinely useful for a specific set of jobs. Skimming a long document to see what it dwells on. Summarising a pile of open ended survey responses. Producing a visual for a presentation about a body of text. Checking whether an article you have written actually emphasises what you intended.

It is not a precise instrument, and that is fine. If you need exact counts, a table is better. A cloud is for the impression.

Building a cloud

  1. Paste your text into the box.
  2. Set Words to show between 10 and 150.
  3. Choose a Color theme and a Background.
  4. Choose whether to allow rotated words.
  5. Leave the common words filter on unless you have a reason to turn it off.
  6. Generate, then download as PNG or SVG, or copy the SVG source.

The stop word filter earns its default

Turn it off once and the reason it is on becomes obvious immediately.

The most frequent words in any English text are the structural ones: the, of, and, to, a, in. They appear so much more often than anything with meaning that they dominate the size scale completely, and every cloud of every text ends up looking almost identical.

Filtering them out lets the words that actually distinguish your text take the sizes they deserve. The checkbox exists because there are cases where the structural words are the subject, such as comparing writing styles, but for the normal purpose of asking what is this about, leaving it on is correct.

Placement is a spiral, and it is deterministic

Words are placed one at a time, largest first. Each one starts at the centre and moves outward along a spiral, testing positions until it finds one where it does not overlap anything already placed.

Being greedy and largest first has a visible consequence. The biggest words claim the middle, and later words settle wherever there is room, which is what gives a cloud its characteristic shape. It also means a long word can end up further out than a shorter word of the same frequency, simply because it needs a wider gap.

Nothing about the layout is random. The same text with the same settings produces the same picture every time, which matters if you are regenerating a graphic for a document and do not want it to shuffle. Even the rotation follows a rule rather than chance: in mixed mode every third word placed is turned sideways, and the rest stay horizontal so readability is preserved for the majority.

A word that cannot find a free position within the search limit is dropped rather than being overlapped onto something else.

Two export formats for two purposes

SVG is vector. It stays crisp at any size, its words remain real text rather than pixels, and it can be opened and edited in design software. Choose it for anything that will be printed, scaled up, or adjusted later. The source can also be copied directly if you want to paste it into a web page or tweak a colour by hand.

PNG is a plain raster image that works absolutely everywhere with no interpretation. Choose it for a slide, a document, a chat message or anything where the recipient just needs a picture.

Related text and visual tools

For the actual numbers behind the picture, Keyword Density Checker gives frequency and density figures, using the same tokenisation this tool builds on, so the two agree about what counts as a word. Word Counter covers totals and reading time.

For conventional charts rather than a cloud, Chart Maker produces them with the same kind of SVG and PNG export. If you want to pick your own colours rather than use one of the five themes, Color Palette Generator is a good place to start. The rest are on the generators hub.

See it in action

Screenshot of the Word Cloud Generator tool with a word cloud built from pasted text showing 10 to 150 words, with Ocean, Sunset, Forest, Berry or Monochrome colour themes, horizontal-only or mixed word rotation, and a background choice
Word Cloud Generator mid-process: a word cloud built from pasted text showing 10 to 150 words, with Ocean, Sunset, Forest, Berry or Monochrome colour themes, horizontal-only or mixed word rotation, and a background choice.
Diagram: where the work happens on a SysFenix page that has no file input at all: the tool arrives as ordinary JavaScript inside the page, works the answer out on your own device and renders it in place, so the upload, queue and server-side record a typical online tool needs never happen
Where the work happens on a SysFenix page that has no file input at all: the tool arrives as ordinary JavaScript inside the page, works the answer out on your own device and renders it in place, so the upload, queue and server-side record a typical online tool needs never happen.

Frequently asked questions

How is a word's size decided?

By how often it appears in your text. The most frequent word gets the largest size and the least frequent of those shown gets the smallest, with everything scaled between a floor and a ceiling so nothing becomes unreadably small or absurdly large. That frequency mapping is the entire point of a word cloud, and it is why the picture tells you something rather than just looking decorative.

What are common words removed by default?

Because without that filter every cloud looks the same. The, and, of and their relatives are the most frequent words in any English text by a wide margin, so leaving them in produces a cloud dominated by words that carry no meaning. The filter is a checkbox you can turn off, which is occasionally useful if you are analysing style rather than subject matter.

How many words can it show?

Between 10 and 150, with 60 as the default. Below about 20 the cloud stops looking like a cloud, and above about 100 the smaller words become too small to read regardless of how large you make the image. Sixty is a good balance for a paragraph or an article.

Is the layout random?

No, and that is deliberate. The same text with the same settings always produces the same picture. Words are placed largest first along a spiral outward from the centre, taking the first position where the word does not collide with anything already placed. In mixed rotation mode, every third word placed is rotated rather than a random selection being rotated, which is what keeps the result reproducible.

Why does a word sometimes end up far from the centre?

Because the spiral had to go a long way before finding a gap it fitted in. Placement is greedy and largest first, so by the time a small word is being placed the middle is already full. Long words suffer more than short ones for the same frequency, since they need a wider clear space. A word that cannot be placed within the search limit is simply left out.

PNG or SVG?

SVG for anything that will be printed, resized or edited afterwards, since it is vector and stays sharp at any size and its text remains real text. PNG for anything being pasted into a document, a slide or a message, since it is a plain image that works everywhere with no interpretation. You can also copy the SVG source directly if you want to drop it into a page or adjust it by hand.

Is my text uploaded anywhere?

No. The counting, the layout and both export formats are all produced in your browser tab. That matters because the text people put through a word cloud is often survey responses, meeting notes, feedback or a draft, none of which anyone intends to publish.

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