How Many Words Do You Need for the TOEIC? A Word-by-Word Check Against ETS Official Sample Questions

Conclusion: the TOEIC does not test rare words. Knowing the 2,000 most common English words lets you recognize 95% of the words in the ETS official sample questions. Adding about 1,200 common TOEIC words raises coverage above 99%. We split the official sample test that ETS publishes (including the listening transcript) and the sample questions in the examinee handbooks into individual words. After excluding personal names and place names, 6,241 words remained. We compared them with two public research word lists:

• The 2,000 most common words (the first 2,000 of the NGSL): cover 95.0% of the words in the official sample questions.
• 2,809 general-service words plus 1,250 common TOEIC words (NGSL + TSL, about 4,100 words): cover 99.2%.
• The Tomaru TOEIC 600+ deck (4,110 words): covers 99.2%. Adding a 1,092-word advanced business supplement raises this to 99.6%.

Treat any conversion to a score conservatively. ETS maps a TOEIC Listening & Reading score of 550 to CEFR B1 and 785 to B2, but it does not publish a vocabulary size. This article uses the sample questions that ETS has made public, not past or real exams, so every score figure here is an estimate. For a target of 600, the 2,000 most common words are a starting point, and the conservative target is about 3,000 words. For a target of 800, the conservative target is about 4,000 words. (The estimation method and its limits are explained below.) The figure of "5,000–6,000 words" that appears often online usually comes without a stated method, and it counts "a word" in a different unit from this article.

*Data updated: October 4, 2026. The calculation method, links to the original documents and the limitations are at the end of the article.*

The Results in One Table

• Coverage of running words: the share of all words in the questions (a repeated word is counted each time) that appear in the word list. This is closest to how often you meet an unknown word while reading the questions.
• Coverage of distinct words: each different word is counted once.
• The word counts for "the n most common words" include the 52 numbers, days and months from the NGSL appendix.

If we look only at the current question format (the format since the 2016 revision, 4,910 words), the numbers are slightly higher: 95.4% for the 2,000 most common words, 99.2% for TOEIC 600+, and 99.7% with the supplement.

What ETS Says Officially

The TOEIC has no official word list, and ETS does not publish how many words you need. This is the first thing to know: every vocabulary-size figure for the TOEIC that you see online is an estimate by a cram school, a publisher or a researcher.

ETS says the TOEIC tests everyday English in the international workplace, not rare words. The ETS score-use document states that the test "avoids esoteric, low-frequency, and highly technical vocabulary", and that when less common words do appear, they are "typical of the international workplace". The questions draw on settings such as offices, personnel, purchasing, travel, technology and health, but they do not require specialist vocabulary from those fields (ETS score-use document, PDF). The ETS research compendium also stresses that the TOEIC is "not a subject test" (ETS research compendium, PDF).

The official mapping between scores and CEFR. The mapping table published by ETS (ETS Global, PDF):

ETS describes the table as a reference guide and does not recommend treating it as strict cut-off lines. In addition, only 45% of the expert panel members agreed with the Reading C1 score of 455, which is below the two-thirds that ETS itself requires (summary of the ETS standard-setting study, PDF). Treat any use of C1 conservatively.

Why Look at Coverage: The 95% and 98% Lines

Applied linguistics research estimates reading comprehension by the share of words in a text that the reader knows:

• About 95%: generally regarded as the minimum for barely understanding a text, where you can guess unknown words from context (Laufer & Ravenhorst-Kalovski, 2010).
• About 98%: the level at which you rarely need a dictionary and can read smoothly (Hu & Nation, 2000; Nation, 2006).

Compared with the official sample questions: the 2,000 most common words reach exactly 95%, and adding the common TOEIC words takes coverage above 99%. Judged by the sample questions, the vocabulary threshold for the TOEIC is lower than many people think. But to read smoothly, you cannot skip the common TOEIC words (for example invoice, warranty, refund, vendor and reservation).

Word Count and Coverage: The First 2,000 Words Give the Most Value

The values in the table are coverage of running words in the official sample questions. "Common TOEIC words" are the first n words of the TSL, taken in order of its frequency ranking.

• After the first 2,000 words, each additional 1,000 words adds only about 2 percentage points.
• The first 300 common TOEIC words are the most effective. If you have already studied all the general-service words, adding 300 TOEIC words raises coverage from 96.9% to 98.3%.
• The order of study matters more than the total. Study the most common words first, then the common TOEIC words. The same number of words then lets you understand more of the questions.

How Scores Relate to Vocabulary Size

ETS does not publish a vocabulary size. Below are two separate estimates: one that this article derives from coverage, and one from existing research.

Estimate in this article (based on coverage of the official sample questions)

This is an estimate with three limitations, which is why the table also lists a "conservative target":

• The sample questions are not past exam questions. ETS publishes only one complete sample test. The passages and vocabulary of a real exam differ each time and may be harder than the sample.
• Linking coverage to scores is an assumption of this article. We matched "barely understand" to B1 and "read smoothly" to B2. ETS does not define them this way.
• A score depends on more than vocabulary. Listening speed, grammar and time management also affect the score.

Existing research (Milton, 2010)

Milton compiled the results of vocabulary-recognition tests taken by people who passed Cambridge English exams (the test covers the 5,000 most common words, with a maximum score of 5,000): about 2,750–3,250 words for B1, about 3,250–3,750 words for B2, and about 3,750–4,500 words for C1. The test takers sat Cambridge exams, not the TOEIC, so these figures serve only as a reference for CEFR levels.

The two estimates are of a similar order of magnitude: roughly 2,000–3,000 words for B1 and roughly 3,000–4,000 words for B2. For conservative preparation, use the upper end of both.

Why Do Some Websites Say 5,000–6,000 Words?

We could not find the original source of this figure. There are two common reasons:

1. "One word" is counted in different ways. For the same level, different units give very different totals:

Vocabulary books also count phrases and the different meanings of one word as separate entries, which raises the number of entries further.

1. The data and method are not stated. Most online figures do not say which questions they used or how they calculated, so they cannot be verified or compared directly with this article.

The numbers in this article are counted by lemma, and the data sources and method are public, so they can be recalculated.

Which Words Remain After Finishing TOEIC 600+

In the official sample questions, the Tomaru TOEIC 600+ deck does not cover only 52 words (0.8%), which are 36 distinct words:

• Appearing 2 or more times: oh (6 times), script (4 times), redeem and audio (3 times each), synthetic, instant, adhesive and shovel (2 times each).
• All the rest appear only once: for example watercolors, tapestries, hometown, northwest, unwell and misty.

With the 1,092-word advanced business supplement added, only 24 words (0.4%) remain. Most of them, such as unwell and hometown, are built from words you have already learned, so you can guess them by understanding their parts. Words that appear only once change with every exam, so we do not recommend treating the list of uncovered words as must-learn words before the test.

Studying in Tomaru

• TOEIC 600+ deck (4,110 words): it includes all the general-service words (NGSL) and all the common TOEIC words (TSL), plus numbers, days and months. Cards appear in order of word frequency, so the most common words come first. It suits people aiming for 600–800. Finishing the whole deck means studying about 4,100 words, which is the amount in the "conservative target" above. The deck exists with meanings in several native languages: Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian and Hindi. Choose yours in the Tomaru deck catalog.
• Advanced business supplement (1,092 words): intermediate and advanced words from the Business Service List (BSL), such as equity, collateral, litigation and procurement. It is for people aiming for 800–900 and above, or who need to read financial reports and contracts. It is available for speakers of Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Hindi, in the same catalog.

Add either deck and you can start studying right away. Tomaru's core vocabulary features are free forever, with no ads. Each card has a meaning in your native language, a pronunciation and two example sentences set in a workplace, and the meanings focus on the senses that appear on the TOEIC. After each answer, the FSRS algorithm schedules the next review (see What Is FSRS for how it works).

How We Calculated (Method and Data)

Official documents. Officially published TOEIC questions are few. We searched the sample questions that can be downloaded from ETS headquarters, ETS regional sites (Europe, India, Canada), IIBC in Japan, the TOEIC representative in Taiwan (忠欣) and YBM in Korea, and confirmed that all of them are republications of the following four documents:

• A sentence that appears in more than one document is counted once.
• The real exam questions published by YBM in Korea are in video form and carry a notice that quoting them without permission is not allowed, so we did not use them.
• Commercially sold official test books are protected by copyright, so we did not use them either.

How we count "a word".

• Inflected forms of the same word count as the same word: plurals, third-person singular, past tense, -ing, comparatives and -ly adverbs.
• Derived words are counted separately: if manage is in a list, that does not mean management is counted as covered.
• Personal names, place names, company names and web addresses are excluded from the denominator. In total, 259 words were excluded.

Coverage formula. Coverage of running words in the official sample questions = the number of words found in the list ÷ the total number of words (after excluding proper nouns).

Word lists used.

• NGSL 1.2 (New General Service List: the 2,809 most common words of general English, plus 52 appendix words) and TSL 1.2 (TOEIC Service List: 1,250 common TOEIC words). The NGSL was compiled from a large corpus of general English, and the TSL from a corpus of TOEIC study materials and practice tests (official website).
• Tomaru TOEIC 600+ and the supplement: the contents of the decks as of October 4, 2026.

Limitations.

• The corpus is only one complete test plus a small number of handbook examples, about 6,200 words. This is all the official sample material that can be obtained legally at present, but it is not a random sample, so the numbers carry error. Please read the results as orders of magnitude, not as figures precise to the decimal place.
• The corpus includes the English instructions in the questions (for example "You will hear" and "Part"), so some words such as script and audio come partly from the instructions.
• Counting derived words as not covered is a conservative method.
• Deck contents change with updates. The deck figures in the tables apply only to the version of October 4, 2026.

Corrections and questions. If you find an error in a number or in a document version, please tell us through the feedback function in the app. We will update this article and note the date of the update.

References

• ETS. *TOEIC Listening and Reading Test: Sample Test* (ST-05).
• ETS. *TOEIC Listening and Reading Test Examinee Handbook*.
• ETS Global. *Mapping the TOEIC Listening and Reading Test on the CEFR*.
• Liu, J., & Costanzo, K. (2013). In *The Research Foundation for the TOEIC Tests: A Compendium of Studies*, Volume II (Chapter 2). ETS.
• Browne, C., Culligan, B., & Phillips, J. (2013). The New General Service List (this article uses version 1.2, released in 2023).
• Browne, C., & Culligan, B. The TOEIC Service List (this article uses version 1.2). https://www.newgeneralservicelist.com/
• Hu, M., & Nation, I. S. P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. *Reading in a Foreign Language*, 13(1), 403–430.
• Nation, I. S. P. (2006). How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening? *The Canadian Modern Language Review*, 63(1), 59–82.
• Laufer, B., & Ravenhorst-Kalovski, G. C. (2010). Lexical threshold revisited: Lexical text coverage, learners' vocabulary size and reading comprehension. *Reading in a Foreign Language*, 22(1), 15–30.
• Milton, J. (2010). The development of vocabulary breadth across the CEFR levels. In I. Bartning, M. Martin, & I. Vedder (Eds.), *Communicative proficiency and linguistic development* (EUROSLA Monographs Series 1), 211–232. https://www.eurosla.org/monographs/EM01/211-232Milton.pdf

Frequently Asked Questions

How many words do you need for the TOEIC?

ETS does not publish an official figure. Compared against the sample questions that ETS has made public, the 2,000 most common words cover 95% of the words, and general-service words plus common TOEIC words (about 4,100 words) cover 99%. The sample questions are not past exam questions, so the conservative target is: about 3,000 words for a target of 600, and about 4,000 words for a target of 800.

How many words do you need for a TOEIC score of 600?

The 2,000 most common words are the starting point, and the conservative target is about 3,000 words. ETS maps a score of 550 to CEFR B1. In the ETS sample questions, the 2,000 most common words let you recognize 95% of the words, but the real exam may be harder than the sample questions.

How many words do you need for a TOEIC score of 800?

The conservative target is about 4,000 words. A score of 785 maps to CEFR B2. To read smoothly, you need the common TOEIC workplace words in addition to the general-service words, for example invoice, warranty and refund.

Does the TOEIC have an official word list?

No. ETS does not publish a word list or a vocabulary size. It says only that the TOEIC avoids esoteric, low-frequency and highly technical vocabulary. Every TOEIC vocabulary-size figure you see online is an estimate.

Why do some people say you need 5,000–6,000 words for the TOEIC?

We could not find the original source of this figure. A common reason is a different counting unit, for example counting different forms of one word (manage, managed, managing) or different meanings of one word as separate entries. Counted by lemma, this article's conservative target for a score of 800 is about 4,000 words.

*Calculations by the Tomaru team using ETS public documents and public word lists.*