Dracula: reading level, length and free edition

Name: Dracula
Author: Bram Stoker

Dracula by Bram Stoker is a novel in English. Our team rates it B2. It runs to 161,387 words with 9,437 different word forms, about 13–27 h of reading at 200 to 100 words per minute, and it is free from Standard Ebooks.

By the Readlang Mobile team (an independent app, not affiliated with readlang.com). Updated 31 October 2026.

Author: Bram Stoker
Language: English
Level: B2
Form: novel
Words: 161,387
Different word forms: 9,437
Forms for 95% / 98%: 3,383 / 6,210
Reading time: 13–27 h
Free edition: Standard Ebooks

Dracula is one of the most famous horror novels, responsible not just for introducing the eponymous Count Dracula, but for laying the foundations for many of the common tropes we see in modern horror fiction. Count Dracula isn’t the first vampire to have graced the pages of Western literature—that honor belongs to Lord Ruthven in “The Vampire,” a short story by John William Polidori—but Dracula is the vampire on which the modern vampire trope is based.

Is Dracula right for your level?

To recognise 95% of the running words in Dracula, you need its 3,383 most frequent word forms; for 98%, the share at which most readers manage a novel without a dictionary, 6,210. The median English B2 book in our table needs 3,747 forms for 95%, so by this measure the book is typical for its level: number 8 of 19, easiest first.

A word form is any spelling that appears in the text, so “walk” and “walked” count twice, and names count too. These numbers are a guide to how much vocabulary the book asks for, not a test. The level itself was set by hand by our team. Before you commit, read one page of the free edition and count the words you do not know: the one-page test takes two minutes.

Which words should you know before you start?

These are the words that Dracula uses most often but that are not among the 2,000 most common word forms across all 309 English books in our library; the number is how many times each appears. Names of people and places are left out. Learning a handful of them first makes the opening chapters easier.

diary 99
boxes 51
patient 49
sunset 45
wolves 45
amongst 40
coffin 40
tomb 36
shock 34
forehead 34
wake 34
sleeping 33
moonlight 33
mist 31
pause 30

How does it begin?

3 May. Bistritz. —Left Munich at 8:35 p.m. , on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Budapest seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets.

From the Standard Ebooks edition, which is in the public domain. If this paragraph already feels slow, try a book one level lower.

How long does it take to read?

Hours to read *Dracula* (161,387 words) at four reading speeds.
Words	100 wpm	150 wpm	200 wpm	250 wpm
161,387	27 h	18 h	13 h	11 h

Learners reading a book at their level often manage 100 to 150 words per minute, and readers in their first language 200 to 250. Where these speeds come from, and a calculator for your own: How long does it take to read a book?

Where can you read it for free?

The free edition is from Standard Ebooks, a volunteer project that proofreads and typesets public-domain books. Standard Ebooks releases its editions into the public domain in the United States under CC0 1.0; you can download it as EPUB, Kindle (AZW3) or KEPUB without signing up.

To read it with a translation over every word you tap, open it in Readlang Mobile on iPhone or iPad.