A cover letter should fit on one page: about 250 to 400 words, arranged in three or four short paragraphs. Anything under roughly 150 words usually looks like you did not bother, and anything past 400 stops being read and starts being skimmed for the exit. The only common exception is the academic or scholarship motivation letter, where the reader expects a fuller page or two of detail on research, teaching, or your reason for applying. For an ordinary job application, a second page is not thoroughness, it is a signal that you could not decide what mattered.
The number
One page, 250 to 400 words, and why those are the numbers
Every hiring manager reading your letter is reading it in a queue, on a screen, with the resume open next to it. They are looking for one thing: a reason to take you seriously enough to read the resume properly. That reason fits in about three hundred words. It has never needed nine hundred.
So the practical target is a single page, roughly 250 to 400 words. That is three or four paragraphs of ordinary length. It is short enough that the whole letter is visible in one look, which matters more than people expect, because a letter that is visible in one look actually gets read from top to bottom. A letter that demands scrolling gets sampled instead, and sampling means your best sentence is a coin flip.
Notice that the target is stated in words, not in pages. Pages are the least reliable unit in the whole conversation. You can push 700 words onto one page with a nine point font and quarter inch margins, and the result is technically a one page cover letter and practically an unreadable one. Word count cannot be gamed the same way. Count the words, and the page takes care of itself.
Every version of the question
Words, paragraphs, pages, and the limits on each side
People ask this question in five different units. Here is the same answer, translated into each of them.
Words
How many words should a cover letter be?
Between 250 and 400. Three hundred is a good place to land. Below 150 you have not made an argument, and above 400 you are competing with your own resume for the reader's attention, which is a fight the letter always loses.
Paragraphs
How many paragraphs should a cover letter be?
Three or four. An opening that names the role and your single most relevant point, one paragraph on why this employer specifically, one proof story with a real number in it, and a two sentence close. Five or more paragraphs almost always means two of them are saying the same thing.
Pages
How many pages should a cover letter be?
One. Not one and a bit, not a page that spills three lines onto a second sheet. If your letter ends two lines into page two, that is not a formatting problem, it is a sign there are two lines somewhere earlier that are not earning their place.
Too short
Can a cover letter be too short?
Yes. A four line note saying you are interested and your resume is attached tells the reader nothing and reads as indifference. If you have room for only one idea, make it a concrete result of yours that maps to what the job asked for. That is a real letter at 150 words.
Too long
Can a cover letter be too long?
Easily, and it is the far more common mistake. Past roughly 400 words the letter starts restating the resume, and restating the resume is how you convince someone they do not need to read either document carefully.
By email
How long should an email cover letter be?
Shorter. When the letter is the body of the email rather than an attachment, aim for 150 to 250 words and keep the paragraphs to two or three lines each. Assume it is being read on a phone, because it usually is.
By letter type
The right length depends on which letter you are writing
A job application cover letter, a speculative letter of interest, and an academic motivation letter are three different documents. Only one of them is allowed to run long.
| Capability | Folio | Where it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Standard job cover letter | One page. 250 to 400 words, three or four paragraphs. | A second page. It reads as an inability to choose what matters. |
| Cover letter in the body of an email | 150 to 250 words. Short paragraphs, no letterhead, no formal address block. | Pasting the full formatted letter, header and all, into the email. |
| Letter of interest or speculative letter | Under 250 words. Nobody asked for this one, so respect the intrusion. | Treating an unsolicited letter as a licence to write more. |
| Academic or scholarship motivation letter | A full page, sometimes two, if the brief allows it. Detail is the point here. | Ignoring a stated word limit in the call for applications. |
| Career change letter | Still one page. The switch needs one clear paragraph, not three of apology. | Explaining the whole backstory instead of the transferable proof. |
| Internal application | Shortest of all. 150 to 200 words. They already know who you are. | Re-introducing yourself to colleagues who have met you. |
If the posting states a word or page limit, that limit outranks every guideline here. Going over it is the one length mistake that gets a letter discarded unread.
The trim
How to cut a long cover letter back to one page
Cut in this order. Each step removes the weakest material first, so what survives is the part that makes your case.
Delete the opening throat-clearing.
The first two sentences of most letters say nothing: writing to express interest, saw the posting on a job board, excited about the opportunity. Cut them and start at the third sentence. You will usually find your real opening was already sitting there.
Remove any sentence that repeats the resume.
The letter is not a summary of the attachment. If a line lists a job title, a date range, or a duty already on the resume, it is spending words the reader has to pay twice for. Keep the one result you want them to notice and let the resume carry the rest.
Cut adjectives about yourself.
Passionate, hardworking, detail oriented, results driven. These are claims anyone can type, so they persuade nobody and cost you fifty words per letter. One number you actually moved beats every adjective in the pile.
Keep one proof story, not three.
Long letters are usually long because they try to prove three things. Pick the single result that most closely matches what the job asked for, tell it properly in four or five sentences, and drop the other two.
Shorten the close to two sentences.
What you would bring, and a clear next step. Nothing else. A paragraph of gratitude and availability at the end is the easiest fifty words to lose in the whole document.
Only then touch the formatting.
Font size and margins are the last resort, not the first. If you are dropping to a font a tired recruiter cannot comfortably read, you have cut in the wrong order and the letter is still too long.
The exceptions
When a longer letter is genuinely fine
There is one honest exception, and it is a big one: the motivation letter. Academic posts, PhD and masters applications, scholarships, research fellowships, and a lot of European hiring ask for a letter of motivation rather than a cover letter, and the reader genuinely wants the detail. Your research direction, your teaching approach, why this department, why now. A full page is normal there and two pages are common. Read the call for applications, follow whatever length it states, and write to that.
The near exceptions are smaller than people hope. A senior or executive role does not license a second page; if anything, an executive who cannot make the case in three hundred words is making a different point than they intended. A highly technical role does not either, because the technical evidence belongs on the resume and in the portfolio, where a reader can scan it. A gap, a relocation, or a career change needs one clear sentence of explanation, not a page of context.
Everything else that pushes a letter long is padding wearing a costume. The full employment history in prose. The paragraph about how you have admired the company since childhood. Three results when one would have landed. When you cut those, the letter does not just get shorter, it gets better, because what is left is the part you would have said out loud if the hiring manager had asked you the question in person.
The practical bit
It is easier to cut a draft than to fill a blank page
Most letters run long for a boring reason: the writer started from nothing, wrote to feel productive, and never went back to cut. Starting from a structured draft inverts that. When there is already a hook, a company paragraph, a proof story and a close on the screen, your job becomes editing, and editing is the part that makes letters short and sharp.
That is the whole role Folio plays here. It drafts a short, structured cover letter from the profile you already built for your resume, so the first version is tied to your real roles and real numbers rather than a template, and you begin by trimming instead of staring. The draft is generated by an external model and you approve every line before it goes anywhere, exactly as described in our note on how AI drafting handles your data. Folio does not police your word count for you. Nothing stops you from writing nine hundred words. The 250 to 400 range is a judgment you make, and this guide is the reasoning behind it.
The export side is worth knowing about, because it is where most tools stop being free. Folio exports the resume and the matching cover letter to PDF and DOCX on the free plan, with no watermark on the file and no upgrade prompt at the download button. Be clear about what free does not include: you get a portfolio.wrxstack.com/yourname address rather than a domain of your own, a small Made with Folio credit is shown on your site, and AI drafting is capped at 10 generations a month. Those are the trades. The download is not one of them.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a cover letter be?
One page, and about 250 to 400 words inside it, split into three or four paragraphs. Below roughly 150 words the letter has not made an argument. Above roughly 400 it starts repeating your resume, and the reader stops paying attention before the part you wanted them to see.
How many words should a cover letter be?
Aim for 250 to 400 words, with 300 as a comfortable middle. Word count is a more honest target than page count, because you can squeeze 700 words onto a single page with tight margins and a small font and still have written a letter nobody will finish.
How many paragraphs should a cover letter be?
Three or four. An opening that names the role and leads with your most relevant point, one paragraph on why this employer in particular, one paragraph telling a single result of yours with a number in it, and a close of two sentences. If you have five paragraphs, two of them are probably making the same point.
Does a cover letter have to be one page?
For a normal job application, yes. A second page is almost never read and it tells the hiring manager you could not decide which of your points mattered most. The exception is a motivation letter for an academic, research, or scholarship application, where a longer letter is expected and a stated word limit usually applies.
Can a cover letter be two pages?
Only if the application specifically asks for a motivation letter or a statement of purpose, which are different documents with their own conventions. For a standard job, two pages works against you: it competes with the resume, it buries your strongest sentence, and it rarely survives the first skim.
Is there a cover letter word limit?
Not universally, but treat 400 words as your own ceiling unless the posting sets a different one. When an employer or an application form does state a limit, that number wins over any general advice, and exceeding it is one of the few length errors that gets a letter thrown out before it is read.