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You've read the job posting twice, written the letter, cut a paragraph, then wondered whether you cut too much. The cursor blinks under a document that fills three-quarters of a page. Is that enough to look like you tried? Is it already too much to survive a first read? You close the file without sending it, which is its own answer.
Here is the direct one: a cover letter should run 250 to 400 words - about three to four short paragraphs - and fit on a single page with normal margins and a standard font size. Not two pages. Not a screen's-worth of scrolling. Rarely under 200 words either, because that reads as an afterthought rather than an application.
That range isn't a guess. In a ResumeLab survey of 205 HR professionals, 42% said they preferred a cover letter between half a page and one full page, and another 40% preferred less than half a page - meaning 82% wanted something at or under one page, and only 18% were open to more. The preference for brevity isn't close.
Why this is a different question from CV length
If you've already worked out how long your CV should be, you might assume the cover letter follows the same logic: more experience, more space. It doesn't. A CV's length can flex with your career - shorter for someone early on, longer for someone well into it, because a CV's job is to document a body of work. A cover letter's job is different: it makes one argument, to one hiring manager, about one role. Argument length doesn't scale with years worked. A twenty-year veteran and a first-time applicant are both trying to say one true thing about why this job, this person, right now - and that fits in the same amount of space regardless of how long the CV attached to it runs.
That's also why a cover letter never grows to two pages the way a senior CV sometimes reasonably does. There's no equivalent of "extensive experience justifies extra length" for a document whose entire function is to be read in the time it takes to decide whether to open the attachment behind it.
What "one page" actually means in word count
A page is a physical constraint that hides a word-count one. At 11 or 12-point type with normal margins and single spacing, a full page holds somewhere around 400-450 words before it starts to look dense. Three to four paragraphs of a few sentences each, plus a greeting and a sign-off, land you in the 250-400 word range without you having to count anything. If you're pasting your draft into a word counter and it comes back over 500, the page will look cramped regardless of what the number says - and a hiring manager will feel that before they read the first line.
Practically, that breaks down into:
- Opening (40-60 words): who you are, the role, and the one sentence that makes this specific application rather than a template.
- Body (150-250 words): one or two concrete examples that connect your experience to what the posting actually asks for - not a re-list of your CV.
- Closing (40-60 words): what you want to happen next, said plainly.
That's the whole shape. Nothing else needs to be in there.
Why hiring managers punish the long version specifically
A Resume Genius survey of hiring managers found that 36% spend less than 30 seconds on a cover letter and another 48% spend between 30 seconds and two minutes - which means the overwhelming majority decide inside a window that a 250-word letter fits comfortably and a 600-word one does not. A long cover letter doesn't get read more slowly and thoroughly. It gets skimmed for the first paragraph, then abandoned, which is worse than being read quickly in full.
The mechanism is simple: a hiring manager already has your CV. Anything in the cover letter that repeats it - "as you can see from my attached CV" followed by a summary of the attached CV - burns the only space you had on information they already possess. Length past 400 words is almost never new information. It's usually the same point said three ways, or a second and third example doing the work the first one already did.
Why a short cover letter can also cost you
The failure mode in the other direction is quieter but just as real. A three-sentence cover letter - "Please find attached my CV for the role. I believe I am a strong fit. Looking forward to hearing from you." - doesn't read as efficient. It reads as a letter nobody wanted to write, sent because a form field required something. Under roughly 150 words, there usually isn't room to make an actual argument: no specific reason for this company, no example that couldn't have been copy-pasted into any other application.
The tell is genericness, not brevity itself. A tight 220-word letter that names the company, the role, and one real example is a strong short letter. A 220-word letter that could be sent to any employer in the sector is a weak one wearing brevity as a disguise. Length is the symptom people obsess over; specificity is the actual variable that decides whether the letter helps or does nothing.
When longer is genuinely the right call
There are a small number of situations where going past one page is defensible, not just tolerated:
- The posting asks for something specific - a writing sample, a response to named criteria, a statement of interest with its own word-count guidance. Follow what's asked, not the general rule.
- A career change that needs explaining. If you're asking a hiring manager to connect experience that doesn't look like an obvious fit, you may need a few extra sentences to draw that line yourself rather than leaving it to guesswork. Even then, aim to stay under 450 words rather than drifting toward a second page.
- Senior and executive roles, where a slightly longer letter that demonstrates strategic thinking is sometimes expected. Even here, "slightly longer" means pushing toward the top of 400 words, not writing two pages.
Outside those cases, more length is not more effort in the reader's eyes. It's more work you're asking them to do.
Does the length rule change by application type or industry?
The 250-400 word range is the default for a standard emailed or uploaded cover letter attached to a corporate application, and it holds across most industries. But the format the letter travels in changes the number slightly.
A cover letter pasted directly into an online application form, rather than attached as a file, should sit at the shorter end of the range - closer to 250 words - because a scrolling text box reads longer than the same words on a printed page. The same applies to a cover letter sent as the body of an email rather than as an attachment: readers skim email bodies faster than they read a document they've deliberately opened, so tightening toward 200-300 words serves you better there.
A LinkedIn message to a recruiter or a short note accompanying a referral is shorter again - two or three sentences, well under 150 words - because it's doing a narrower job: getting a conversation started, not making the full case a formal cover letter has to make.
Academic and EU-style motivation letters are the one real exception, and even there it's a difference in density rather than a license to write at length. A motivation letter for a graduate programme or an EU institution role is sometimes explicitly capped at one page but expected to cover more ground - your reasoning, relevant background and future intent - which means tighter sentences, not more of them. If a posting specifies a word or character limit for this kind of letter, that instruction overrides everything in this article: write to the number they gave you.
Outside those specific formats, the default holds: one page, 250 to 400 words, for the overwhelming majority of applications you'll send.
How to cut a draft down without losing the substance
If your draft is running long, the fix is rarely "remove a sentence from every paragraph" - that leaves the same weak structure, just thinner. Instead:
Cut whichever paragraph restates your CV. If a sentence could be pulled straight from your work history without rewording, it's not earning its place in the letter - the CV already says it, and the reader has the CV.
Cut the throat-clearing opener. "I am writing to apply for the position of X, which I saw advertised on Y" tells the reader nothing they don't already know from the subject line. Start with the specific reason instead.
Keep exactly one example, chosen well, rather than three examples half-explained. One result described in two sentences beats three achievements listed in fragments.
If you're not sure whether a cut example was your strongest one, that's usually a sign the letter needs a rewrite rather than a trim - the same problem that shows up when tailoring a CV too thinly across too many applications. A speculative cover letter faces the same length discipline, with the added problem of no job posting to anchor the example to - worth reading if that's the letter you're writing.
A quick self-check before you send it
Before you attach the file, run your draft against a short list rather than trusting a gut feeling about length:
- Read it aloud, once, at a normal pace. If it takes more than about ninety seconds, it is very likely over 400 words and worth cutting.
- Check whether every sentence would survive being read by someone who has already read your CV. If a sentence only restates something the CV already shows, it's a candidate for deletion regardless of how the word count looks overall.
- Confirm the letter names the company and the role somewhere in the first two sentences, not just in the file name. A short letter that skips this reads as generic; a long letter that skips it has wasted even more of the reader's time getting nowhere.
- Ask whether the letter would still make sense if you deleted the last paragraph. If it would, the closing paragraph is probably padding rather than a genuine call to action, and cutting it moves a long letter closer to the range that actually gets read.
If you're still unsure whether you need one at all
Some applications don't call for a cover letter in the first place, and forcing one in doesn't help. If that's the question you're actually asking, our guide on when cover letters still matter covers when to write one and when skipping it is the better call.
If you do need one and want a second opinion on whether yours is doing its job - not just whether it's the right length, but whether the one example you kept is the right one - a tailored cover letter is included with Kaeros's Career Standard package and above, written alongside your CV rather than as an afterthought. And if the CV behind it is the part you're less sure about, a free CV review will tell you plainly what's working and what isn't, before you spend anything.
The length question has a real answer: 250 to 400 words, one page, no exceptions worth building your strategy around. What you do inside that space is the part actually worth agonizing over.