id vs its, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“id” is an unknown and “its” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#5,272
“id” frequency rank: #9,388
“its” frequency rank: 14660
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	id	its
Definition	[1] Nominativ Singular Neutrum des Pronomens is	sein

Letter map: id vs its

Shared letters muted; letters that set id and its apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch

3 ch

its

Role in the sentence - id and its

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: id is anunknown and itsapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14660, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

id is recorded at frequency rank #5,272, classified as anunknown, pronounced […]. its is at rank #9,388, tagged as apron, pronounced [ɪts].

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 14660, this pair ranks #1,949,645 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of id vs its

Shared letters: i. Private to "id": d. Private to "its": st.

"id" · 2 letters · shape VC · "its" · 3 letters · shape VCC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "id" for "its" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "id" is an unknown and "its" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary German text, does "id" or "its" show up more?

"id" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,272 in our German list, against #9,388 for "its". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "id" and "its". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "id" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "its" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,949,645 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"id" and "its" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "IMs vs its". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #1,949,645 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.