alotvsatWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: alot is a noun, at is a preposition, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“alot” is a noun and “at” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#7,879
“alot” frequency rank
#21
“at” frequency rank
7900
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature alot at
Definition Alternative form of a lot. In, near, or in the general vicinity of (a particular place).

Letter map: alot vs at

Shared letters muted; letters that set alot and at apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
alot
2 ch
at

Role in the sentence - alot and at

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: alot is anoun and atapreposition. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 7900, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

alot is recorded at frequency rank #7,879, classified as anoun. at is at rank #21, tagged as aprep, pronounced /æt/.

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 7900, this pair ranks #505,058 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of alot vs at

Shared letters: at. Private to "alot": lo. Private to "at": -.

"alot" · 4 letters · shape VCVC  ·  "at" · 2 letters · shape VC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • alotalott · aolt · laot

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "alot" and "at" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "alot" is a noun and "at" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "alot" or "at" show up more?
"at" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21 in our English list, against #7,879 for "alot". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "alot" and "at".

  • Full dictionary entry for "alot" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "at" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #505,058 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "alot" and "at" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "algo vs alot". 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 #505,058 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list