How many English words do you know?

Take BRAVE, a research-based test that measures your receptive vocabulary in 2 minutes. Works for everyone, from beginning learners to highly literate native speakers.

What is BRAVE

BRAVE stands for Brief Receptive Adaptive Vocabulary Evaluation. It is a research-based test built on modern psychometric methods and validated on both English learners and native speakers.

BRAVE measures receptive vocabulary — the words you can recognize and understand when you see them.

Your result is reported in word families. A word family groups closely related forms of a word together, such as develop, develops, developed, and development. BRAVE uses a reference lexicon of 28,276 English word families, from common everyday words to rare and advanced vocabulary.

BRAVE is free, with no sign-up and no ads.

Key results

BRAVE has been taken by learners at all levels and by native speakers from around the world. Here is how their scores compare.

Explore detailed results.

Why BRAVE is different

Adaptive. BRAVE chooses each question based on your previous answers, so beginners and advanced test-takers see different words.

Wide-range. BRAVE was designed to measure learners and native speakers on the same vocabulary scale.

Interpretable. Your result is reported in word families and compared with results from other test-takers. Learners also receive an approximate CEFR level.

Credible. BRAVE is built on Item Response Theory and Computerized Adaptive Testing, two foundations of modern psychometrics. It includes checks for over-claiming and inattentive responding, and has been validated on data from more than 40,000 learners and native speakers.

Learn more about how BRAVE works.

Who is BRAVE for

Curious test-takers. A quick way to measure your English receptive vocabulary, compare your result with learners and native speakers, and check your approximate CEFR level.

Educators. A low-stakes assessment for placement, screening, or progress checks.

Researchers. A brief, broad-range receptive vocabulary measure for unsupervised online studies, mixed L1/L2 samples, and larger test batteries. Learn more about BRAVE for research.

More than 220,000 people have taken the English version of BRAVE.

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What is your CEFR proficiency level?

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Did you take the test seriously? It is absolutely fine if not, we just need to know if we can use your results in our research.

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Results

Comparison with native speakers

Vocabulary grows throughout life, with the fastest gains during childhood and adolescence.

Comparison with non-native speakers

Reliability

What does the test measure exactly?

The test measures receptive vocabulary — the number of words you recognize in reading and listening. This reflects the range and depth of topics you can understand. Receptive vocabulary is usually several times larger than productive vocabulary, the words you actively use in speech or writing.

What counts as a word?

The test reports results in word families. For example: limit, limitation, limitations, limited, limiting, limitless, limitlessly, limits, and unlimited all count as one word family.

How many words are there in English?

In the test, the highest possible score is based on a database of 28,276 word families, but this is by no means a complete list.

How can the test work with only a few dozen questions?

This is the magic of advanced statistics and modern techniques of computerized adaptive testing. You can read more on inner workings of the test.

Is there more information about how others score?

You can explore detailed results from more than 220,000 native and non-native speakers.

What should I do if my result reliability is low?

Take the test again. The more carefully you mark only the words you truly know, the more reliable your result will be.