English word lists by level
1594 words sorted into the six CEFR levels, each with pronunciation, a plain definition and a sentence showing it in use. Same words our vocabulary test samples from.
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A1 Beginner
155The basics: family, food, numbers, the verbs that get you through a day.
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A2 Elementary
214Routine language: work, travel, shopping, yesterday and next week.
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B1 Intermediate
192Most everyday topics, and the point where ordinary speech stops being a wall.
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B2 Upper-intermediate
250Unedited news, films and workplace English become workable.
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C1 Advanced
381Academic and low-frequency general English, where progress slows down.
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C2 Proficiency
402The long tail: precise, formal, often literary words.
Not sure which list is yours?
The vocabulary size test samples across all six levels and gives you a word count and a CEFR level in about two minutes.
What the levels mean in words
The CEFR describes what you can do with a language rather than which words you need, so there is no official per-level wordlist to copy. What exists is a strong correlation between vocabulary size and level, which is why these lists sort by frequency banding: the earlier levels hold the words that appear constantly, the later ones the words that appear rarely and carry precision.
Roughly, A1 sits under 1,500 word families, B1 around 2,750 to 3,250, C1 between 5,000 and 10,000. The full breakdown, including why the jump from B2 to C1 feels so much slower than A1 to A2, is in vocabulary size by CEFR level.