Free Russian Stress Marker
This Russian stress marker adds stress marks to Russian text as you type. Paste or type up to 20,000 characters, and after a short pause every word it knows shows its stressed vowel, either with an accent (молоко́) or as a capital letter (молокО). It writes ё where the word has it, and where a word can be stressed two ways, as in замок, it asks you instead of guessing. A Copy button takes the marked text. It's free, needs no signup and works on a phone.
The text appears here with its stress marks.
Dotted: two possible stresses. Dashed: chosen from the word before. Wavy: not in the dictionary.
How the Russian stress marker works
Paste or type Russian into the box. After a short pause the stress marks appear, and they keep up as you go on typing. The box takes up to 20,000 characters.
A line under the text counts three things: the words marked, the words with two possible stresses and the words not found. The Copy button copies the marked text, including any stresses you picked by hand.
There are three options. You can choose the style of mark, an acute accent or a capital letter. You can turn off ё, and you can have one-syllable words marked as well. The sections below explain each.
Why Russian text doesn't mark stress
Russian stress can fall on any syllable, and it can move when the word changes: рука́, but ру́ку. Yet normal Russian text never shows it. Books, newspapers, signs and websites leave it out, because native speakers already know where it goes. You'll only see stress marks in dictionaries, textbooks and children's books.
That leaves learners to remember the stress word by word, and it matters for more than accent. An unstressed о sounds close to а, so молоко́ sounds roughly like “malako”. Put the stress in the wrong place and you can say a different word: за́мок is a castle, замо́к is a lock.
How to read Russian stress marks
The mark sits over the stressed vowel. In молоко́ the stress falls on the last syllable, and in ру́ку on the first. These are sometimes called Russian accent marks, but they're a reading aid, not part of the spelling, so you'd leave them out of a normal message. If you prefer, the tool writes the stressed vowel as a capital letter instead: молокО.
One-syllable words aren't marked by default, since their stress has only one place to go. If you want every word marked, an option adds them too: до́м.
Ё is always stressed
Russian usually prints ё as plain е. The stress marker puts the ё back where the word has it, so еще becomes ещё and пришел becomes пришёл. Ё is always stressed, so it gets no extra mark. If you'd rather keep the е, switch the option off and the stressed е gets the accent instead: еще́.
Words with two possible stresses
Some Russian words are spelled alike but stressed differently, and the stress changes the meaning. The tool doesn't guess these. It shows the word as “two possible”, and you tap it to see each stress with what it means: за́мок (castle) and замо́к (lock), or ру́ки (hands, nominative plural) and руки́ (of a hand, genitive singular). Все and всё work the same way. Your pick is marked and copied. A word you haven't picked is copied without a mark.
Sometimes the word before settles it, and the tool uses that only when exactly one reading fits. After в or на it picks the locative: в саду́, на борту́. After a preposition that takes the genitive, such as без, из, до or у, it picks the genitive: без руки́. After к it picks the dative (к са́ду), and after два, три and четыре the special form that follows them: два часа́, but до ча́са. You can still tap those words to change them.
Some words have two correct stresses, as in ко́лледж and колле́дж, or о́тдал and отда́л. Here the tool marks the first and shows the other as “also said”. And a capitalized word in the middle of a sentence gets a name's stress: в Бо́стон.
Where the stress marks come from
The dictionary is built from Wiktionary's inflection tables, through kaikki.org. It holds about 920,000 spellings, with every case and tense form, not only the dictionary headwords, plus the names of people and places.
Wiktionary lists rare words too, so some spellings came with a rare second stress. По́том, “with sweat”, sits in the list next to пото́м, “then”, though it's almost never the one meant. A frequency estimate drops readings like that, and the most common spellings with two stresses were checked by hand, 345 decisions in all. We compared the result with OpenRussian, a separate dictionary. The two agree on 99% of the roughly 376,000 stressed forms both have, and most of the rest are rare words or errors in the other list.
What it doesn't do
There's no audio, so it won't tell you how a word sounds beyond where the stress falls. Long compounds get their main stress only, without the secondary one. Stress that moves onto a preposition, as in на́ пол and за́ руку, isn't shown. And a word that isn't in the dictionary, such as rare slang, a new loanword or a typo, is left as you typed it and underlined.
Marking a reading text before class
For teachers, it's a fast way to prepare a reading text. Paste it in, tap each word marked “two possible” and pick the reading that fits, then copy the result into your worksheet or slides. Check the count line before you copy, because a word you haven't picked goes out without a mark.
If you want practice material with the stresses already in place, the Russian verb conjugation worksheets and the Russian noun declension worksheets print every form with its stress mark. So does the Russian numbers to words converter, which writes any number out in Russian with the stresses on.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Russian stress marker free?
Yes. There's no account or email address, and it works in the browser on a computer or a phone.
Is my text sent anywhere?
Not as text. To look the words up, the page sends our server a list of the distinct words, lower-cased and in no order, so your sentences never leave the browser. Nothing is stored or logged. We count page opens and copies, never what you type.
How accurate is this Russian stress checker?
The dictionary comes from Wiktionary's inflection tables, about 920,000 spellings, and the most common words with two stresses were checked by hand. Against OpenRussian, a separate dictionary, it agrees on 99% of the roughly 376,000 stressed forms both have, and most of the rest are rare words or errors in the other list. It won't mark a word it doesn't know, and it doesn't guess between two readings.
Why does a word show two possible stresses?
Because Russian spells some different words alike. За́мок is a castle and замо́к is a lock, and only the sentence tells you which is meant. Tap the word to see both readings and pick one. If the word before it settles the question, as in без руки́, the tool picks for you, and you can still change it.
Why is a word not marked?
There are three usual reasons. Words with one syllable aren't marked by default, though an option turns that on. A word with two possible stresses stays unmarked until you pick one. And a word that isn't in the dictionary, such as rare slang, a new loanword or a typo, is left as typed and underlined.
Does it mark ё?
Yes. By default it writes ё wherever the word has it, so еще becomes ещё, and since ё is always stressed it needs no extra mark. With that option off, the stressed е gets the accent instead: еще́.
How do I type a Russian stress mark myself?
The mark is the combining acute accent, Unicode U+0301, typed straight after the vowel it belongs to: а followed by U+0301 gives а́. It's also the character the Copy button gives you. On Windows with a Russian keyboard, many people paste it in rather than type it. If that's a nuisance, the capital-letter style (молокО) needs no special character.
Can I mark a whole story or article?
Yes, if it's under 20,000 characters. Paste it in and the marks appear after a short pause. For a longer text, mark it in parts and copy each one. Before you copy, pick a reading for every word shown as two possible, because those go out without a mark. The marked text then pastes into a worksheet, slides or flashcards like any other text.