How long should a cover letter be?

150 to 250 words. Half a page. Four short paragraphs.Never more than one page, and one page is already generous. If you want the number and nothing else, that's it.

Why that number

A recruiter working through a stack of applications gives each one a few seconds before deciding whether to read properly. Your letter isn't competing against other letters for quality — it's competing for the decision to keep reading at all. A dense page loses that decision before a word is judged.

There's a second reason, and it's the more important one: length is usually a symptom. Letters run long when the writer hasn't decided what the argument is, so they include everything and hope something lands. Cutting to 250 words forces the decision. The constraint isn't a style rule, it's a thinking tool.

What to cut, in order

The biography paragraph."I graduated in 2016 and since then have worked across…" — that's your CV, and they already have it. Nothing in a chronological summary earns its space.

Anything that could be sent to another company.Read each sentence and ask whether it would survive swapping the company name. If it would, it's filler. This usually kills the opening line and most of the closing paragraph.

Achievements that don't serve your main point.The hardest cut, because they're often your best material. But a letter is one argument — evidence that doesn't support that argument dilutes it, however impressive it is. Save it for the interview.

Logistics. Notice period, salary expectations, availability, relocation. None of it belongs here; all of it belongs in a later conversation or the application form.

Throat-clearing."I am writing to apply for the position of…" They know. "I would like to take this opportunity to…" Just say the thing.

What stays

A specific observation about their business. One sentence connecting it to you. Two to four sentences of real evidence — with exact numbers — that proves the connection. A short, concrete plan. A close that offers something rather than requesting consideration. That's the leitmotiv structure, and it fits comfortably inside 250 words.

The test

Delete your first paragraph and read what's left. If the letter is now better — which it often is — you found your real opening. Repeat until deleting hurts.

One caveat worth knowing: a few markets and public-sector processes do expect a longer, more formal letter, and some application forms specify a word count. Instructions in the posting always beat the general rule. Absent instructions, keep it short.

Does the answer change by country?

The 150–250 range holds across most English-language markets, but the conventions around it differ, and applying one country's habits in another is a quiet way to look careless.

United Kingdom. Usually called a covering letterrather than a cover letter; the two words describe the same document and the same length applies to both. Half a page to one page, and it is expected rather than optional — many UK postings still treat it as part of a complete application. Formal sign-offs persist: “Yours sincerely” when you have a name, “Yours faithfully” when you don't.

United States.Shorter and often optional. Plenty of US employers never read it, but the ones who do treat it as decisive, so a tight 150–200 words is the right hedge. Never attach a photo, date of birth or marital status — normal in parts of Europe, a red flag here.

Germany and Austria.The one real exception. The Anschreiben is a formal document in a complete application (Bewerbungsunterlagen), and a full page is normal rather than excessive. Register matters as much as length: match the posting's du or Sie, and close with “Mit freundlichen Grüßen” unless the posting is clearly informal.

Netherlands and the Nordics. Short and plain. Directness reads as confidence rather than rudeness, and elaborate formality reads as padding.

Whatever the market, the posting's own instructions beat every convention above. If it names a word count, use it.

How do you know if yours is too long?

Word count is the blunt test: past roughly 300 words you are almost certainly including something that belongs in the CV or the interview. But length alone is a poor diagnostic, because a tight 280-word letter reads faster than a padded 200-word one. Two shape problems matter more than the total.

One unbroken block of text. A single dense paragraph is refused before it is read, at any length. Four short paragraphs at 250 words will be read; one paragraph at 180 often will not.

Sentences the reader loses their place in. Anything past about 30 words has to be re-read, and a skimming reader does not re-read, they stop. If you cannot say a sentence out loud in one breath, split it.

Check yours in a few seconds

Paste your letter into the cover letter length checker — it gives you the word count, the skim time, and flags the two structural faults that get letters skipped regardless of length: one unbroken block of text, and sentences long enough to lose the reader mid-way. It runs in your browser, so nothing you paste is uploaded or stored. If you also want to know whether it reads as generic, the cliché checker names the stock phrases directly.

Job Badger writes to this length by default — one argument, grounded in your real experience, no filler. See what it produces.