in vs its, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#269
“in” frequency rank: #11,659
“its” frequency rank: 11928
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

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

Letter map: in vs its

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

2 ch

3 ch

its

Role in the sentence - in and its

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: in is apreposition and itsanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11928, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

in is recorded at frequency rank #269, classified as aprep. 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 11928, this pair ranks #60,803 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of in vs its

Shared letters: i. Private to "in": n. Private to "its": st.

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "in" and "its" mean the same thing in a sentence?

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

Which is more common, "in" or "its"?

"in" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #269 in our Portuguese list, against #11,659 for "its". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

Full dictionary entry for "in" 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 #60,803 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"in" and "its" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ino vs its". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #60,803 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.