What “free” covers here
There is no price, no watermark on the picture, no account and no email address to hand over. There is also no counter: the generator’s script has no code that limits how many clouds you make in a day. We checked this by reading the script, not by taking anyone’s word for it. The running costs are met by display adverts from Google AdSense, which the privacy policy describes. The adverts sit on the page around the tool and are never drawn into your PNG.
The limits, taken from the tool’s own code
Honest limits are more useful than a list of promises, so here is every setting the generator has and its range.
| Setting | What the generator allows |
|---|---|
| Words drawn | 10 to 150 in steps of 5; the default is 60 |
| Image | PNG, 900 by 620 pixels, white background |
| Shapes | Rectangle and circle |
| Colour themes | Four: Spark, Sunset, Ocean and Ink |
| Fonts | Four: Modern Sans, Classic Serif, Monospace and Bold Display |
| Text in | Pasted text, or a plain .txt file |
| Filler-word list | English only, 180 words, can be switched off |
| Vertical words | Off by default; when on, roughly one word in five after the first three is turned upright |
Missing, and worth knowing before you start: no SVG or JPG export, no transparent background, no Word, PDF or spreadsheet upload, no custom shapes, and no way to save a cloud and edit it later. If you need any of those, this is not the right tool, and it is better to find that out now than after an hour of tidying text.
Worked example: why a short text looks flat
Take this paragraph about teamwork. It is 39 words long.
Teamwork builds trust. Trust builds results. Good teams listen, share ideas and support each other. When teams communicate clearly, projects finish on time and customers notice the difference. Great communication, honest feedback and shared goals make every team stronger.
With the filler-word filter on, 31 of the 39 words survive and they make 28 different words. Three of them appear twice: builds, trust and teams. The other 25 appear once. That matters because the generator scales type between 16 and 96 pixels according to count. With only two different counts in play, every word is drawn at one of exactly two sizes: the three repeated words at 96 pixels and all the rest at 16. The cloud is technically correct and visually dull.
The Max words slider shows the other side of this. Set to 10, the generator keeps the first ten words after sorting by count, and words with the same count stay in the order they first appeared. So you would see builds, trust and teams, then the next seven in order of appearance: teamwork, results, good, listen, share, ideas and support. Communicate and everything after it would be cut, simply because it came later in the paragraph. Longer text, with more words repeating at different rates, is the real cure.
What you download
The download button saves a PNG called word-cloud.png. It is 900 pixels wide and 620 high, with a plain white background. Divide by 300 dots per inch and you get a print size of 3 by roughly 2.07 inches. That is simple arithmetic, not a test of any printer, but it tells you the image suits slides, web pages and documents, and will look soft on a poster.
Words that cannot find a free space inside the shape are skipped without a message, so the finished cloud can contain fewer words than the slider says. If a word you care about is missing, lower the number of words or choose the rectangle, which has the most room.
Using the picture: your text, your rights
The picture contains only words from the text you pasted. GOV.UK explains that copyright protects original written work automatically, with no need to apply or pay a fee, and that it stops others using the work without permission (gov.uk/copyright, read 21 October 2026). The practical rule is simple: make clouds from text you wrote, or text you have permission to use. Whether a cloud made from someone else’s text needs their permission depends on the circumstances, and we cannot advise on that. The generator does not check what you paste.
A short routine for a good result
- Start with a few hundred words if you can. One paragraph gives the flat result shown above.
- Delete headings, page numbers and anything you do not want counted.
- Run the checker at the top of this page to see how many different words you have and how many different counts.
- Generate, then remove any single word that dominates and does not belong, such as a brand name.
- Download the PNG and add a caption saying what text it came from.
Privacy in one paragraph
The counting and drawing happen on your device. The generator page’s script has no network calls, no cookies of its own and no browser storage; reloading the page empties it. The page does load Google’s advertising script, and the privacy policy explains what that means for cookies and how to manage them.
Also on this site: a step-by-step guide, and how the words are counted.
- Is it really free?
- Yes. There is no watermark, no account and no charge. The site pays its way with display adverts, which appear on the page and never inside the downloaded image.
- What is the biggest cloud I can make?
- The slider goes up to 150 words and the image is 900 by 620 pixels. Words that cannot find room are left out, so you may see slightly fewer than you asked for.
- Why are some words tiny?
- Size follows count. If most words appear once, they all share the smallest size, 16 pixels. A longer text gives more different counts and a better spread of sizes.
- Will the picture print well?
- On a slide or in a document, yes. At 900 by 620 pixels it is about 3 by 2 inches at 300 dots per inch, so a full-page print will look soft.
- Is my text sent anywhere?
- The script that builds the cloud works inside your browser and contains no code that sends your text out. The page does also load Google's advertising script, as the privacy policy explains.