billigvsbillsWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: billig is a adjective, bills is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“billig” is an adjective and “bills” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#4,251
“billig” frequency rank
#48,785
“bills” frequency rank
53036
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature billig bills
Definition angemessen (recht und billig) Plural des Substantivs bill

Letter map: billig vs bills

Shared letters muted; letters that set billig and bills apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. billig runs 6 letters (CVCCVC) against bills's 5 (CVCCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
billig
5 ch
bills

Grammar separator: billig vs bills

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: billig is anadjective and billsanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53036, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

billig is recorded at frequency rank #4,251, classified as anadj, pronounced [ˈbɪlɪç]. bills is at rank #48,785, tagged as anoun, pronounced […].

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 53036, this pair ranks #1,073,587 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of billig vs bills

Shared letters: bil. Private to "billig": g. Private to "bills": s.

"billig" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "bills" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • billigbbillig · bilig · bililg · billgi · billigg · blilig · ibllig
  • billsbbills · billss · bils · bilsl · blils · iblls

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "billig" for "bills" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "billig" is an adjective and "bills" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "billig" or "bills" show up more?
"billig" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,251 in our German list, against #48,785 for "bills". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "billig" and "bills". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "billig" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bills" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,073,587 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "billig" and "bills" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bills vs puzzles". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #1,073,587 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list