How many words for each CEFR level?
How many words do you need for each CEFR level? As a rough guide from Milton and Alexiou's research, in English word families: A1 up to about 1,500, A2 about 1,500 to 2,500, B1 about 2,750 to 3,250, B2 about 3,250 to 3,750, C1 about 3,750 to 4,500, and C2 about 4,500 to 5,000. These are receptive counts from one study, so treat them as ranges, not exact thresholds, and expect them to shift by language and by how you learn.
The levels at a glance
- A1 (a few set phrases): up to about 1,500 word families.
- A2 (basic everyday needs): about 1,500 to 2,500.
- B1 (independent, gets by day to day): about 2,750 to 3,250.
- B2 (comfortable at work or study): about 3,250 to 3,750.
- C1 (advanced, handles most things): about 3,750 to 4,500.
- C2 (near-native): about 4,500 to 5,000.
Most people mean B2 when they say fluent, so a few thousand well-chosen words gets you a long way. What moves you up a level fastest is learning the most common words first, not padding the total with rare ones. If you're wondering what a smaller total gets you, see whether 500 words is enough.
Source: Milton and Alexiou, vocabulary size across the CEFR levels.
People fixate on the total. What actually moves you from B1 to B2 is spending those words on the ones you hear every day, in frequency order, not scattering them across the dictionary.