ilsvsitsWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: ils is a pronoun, its is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#44,900
“ils” frequency rank
#11,659
“its” frequency rank
56559
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ils its
Definition eles adjetivo possessivo da terceira pessoa neutra do singular, dele ou dela.

Letter map: ils vs its

Shared letters muted; letters that set ils and its apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
ils
3 ch
its

Part-of-speech tell for ils / its

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ils is apronoun and itsanadjective. On the page they differ by a single letter - l in “ils” becomes t in “its”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 56559, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ils is recorded at frequency rank #44,900, classified as apron, pronounced \il\. its is at rank #11,659, tagged as anadj.

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 56559, this pair ranks #9,892 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ils vs its

Shared letters: is. Private to "ils": l. Private to "its": t.

"ils" · 3 letters · shape VCC  ·  "its" · 3 letters · shape VCC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ils" and "its" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ils" is a pronoun and "its" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "ils" or "its"?
"its" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,659 in our Portuguese list, against #44,900 for "ils". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "ils" vs "its" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ils" 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 #9,892 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ils" and "its" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ils vs ino". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #9,892 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list