comevscostWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: come is a verb, cost is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“come” is a verb and “cost” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#9,344
“come” frequency rank
#27,668
“cost” frequency rank
37012
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature come cost
Definition kommen Kosten

Letter map: come vs cost

Shared letters muted; letters that set come and cost apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
come
4 ch
cost

Role in the sentence - come and cost

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: come is averb and costanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37012, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

come is recorded at frequency rank #9,344, classified as averb, pronounced [kʌm]. cost is at rank #27,668, 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 37012, this pair ranks #1,601,043 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of come vs cost

Shared letters: co. Private to "come": em. Private to "cost": st.

"come" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "cost" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • comeccome · cmoe · coem · comme · ocme
  • costccost · cosst · costt · cots · csot · ocst

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "come" and "cost" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "come" is a verb and "cost" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "come" or "cost" show up more?
"come" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,344 in our German list, against #27,668 for "cost". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "come" and "cost".

  • Full dictionary entry for "come" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cost" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,601,043 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "come" and "cost" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cost 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 #1,601,043 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