Customise or customize?
In American English write customize; in British and Commonwealth English, customise. customise is a verb meaning “Non-Oxford British English standard spelling of customize”; customize is a verb meaning “To build or alter according to personal preferences or specifications”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) customize is about 6.8 times as common as customise.
What is the difference between customise and customize?
| customise | customize | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | verb | verb |
| Meaning | To build or alter according to personal preferences or specifications | |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Forms | customises, customising, customised | customizes, customizing, customized |
| Pronunciation | not recorded | /ˈkʌs.tə.maɪ̯z/ /ˈkas.tə.mɑɪ̯z/ /ˈkas.tə.maɪ̯z/ |
| Region | UK | no label |
| In writing | about once in every 4 million words | 1.9 times per million words |
Sources: customise and customize in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of customise and customize
customize
- 1
To build or alter according to personal preferences or specifications
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, customise or customize?
customise appears about once in every 4 million words; customize 1.9 times per million words.
customise about once in every 4 million wordscustomize 1.9 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search customise vs customize?
“customise vs customize” is searched about 30 times a month on Google (Bing reports no separate figure) in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“customize vs customise”, “customise or customize”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.