Learn Top 100, 500, 1000+
Most Frequent Spanish Words

Research on language understanding shows that learning Spanish efficiently depends on learning the most frequent words first, not on memorizing long vocabulary lists. In our large-scale study measuring how understanding grows with vocabulary size, we quantified how much real Spanish learners can comprehend at each stage of learning.

According to the research, learning the top 100 Spanish words gives you about 50% language understanding, the top 500 words around 66%, and the top 1000 words over 73% of real-world Spanish. This page focuses on the very first step: the Top 100 most frequent Spanish words, which form the foundation of everyday comprehension.

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Top 100 Most Frequent Spanish Words

Below is a representative list of the Top 100 most frequent Spanish words, ordered by real-world usage frequency.

#	Word	#	Word	#	Word	#	Word
1	de	26	poder	51	ha	76	día
2	el	27	ser	52	sus	77	sobre
3	la	28	hacer	53	era	78	encontrar
4	que	29	te	54	cuando	79	hablar
5	a	30	como	55	muy	80	hasta
6	en	31	pero	56	así	81	venir
7	y	32	decir	57	este	82	hombre
8	no	33	si	58	saber	83	solo
9	un	34	mi	59	a la	84	pensar
10	es	35	más	60	lo que	85	ese
11	por	36	querer	61	ahora	86	tiempo
12	lo	37	bien	62	crear	87	llevar
13	los	38	le	63	hay	88	porque
14	se	39	eso	64	algo	89	gracias
15	una	40	yo	65	vamos	90	mismo
16	con	41	tu	66	dejar	91	años
17	estar	42	ver	67	vez	92	casa
18	ir	43	aquí	68	ella	93	sentar
19	tener	44	bueno	69	también	94	soy
20	las	45	todo	70	nos	95	mucho
21	para	46	o	71	dos	96	necesitar
22	su	47	deber	72	nada	97	entonces
23	me	48	ya	73	tengo	98	volver
24	haber	49	dar	74	sin	99	pasar
25	esta	50	esto	75	todos	100	no sé

What to Do Next

The top 100 words establish the core of Spanish understanding. The largest gains come as learners move to the top 300 and 500 words, where comprehension grows rapidly, and then to 1000+ words, where Spanish becomes comfortable to read and understand in real contexts.

WRD is built on the same research and tracks language understanding precisely as each word is learned, guiding learners from the top 100 Spanish words to higher levels in the most efficient way possible.

With its structured progression, the WRD app helps learners expand vocabulary beyond the most common words.

→ Download WRD and start learning today

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