diff --git a/geval.cabal b/geval.cabal
index 7cea59f..c5950cb 100644
--- a/geval.cabal
+++ b/geval.cabal
@@ -34,6 +34,7 @@ library
                      , Data.Conduit.SmartSource
                      , Data.Conduit.Rank
                      , GEval.FeatureExtractor
+                     , GEval.WER
                      , Text.Tokenizer
                      , Paths_geval
   build-depends:       base >= 4.7 && < 5
@@ -74,6 +75,7 @@ library
                      , process
                      , uri-encode
                      , MissingH
+                     , array
   default-language:    Haskell2010
 
 executable geval
diff --git a/src/GEval/BLEU.hs b/src/GEval/BLEU.hs
index 3bb0e42..3d7650f 100644
--- a/src/GEval/BLEU.hs
+++ b/src/GEval/BLEU.hs
@@ -1,5 +1,3 @@
-{-# LANGUAGE BangPatterns #-}
-
 module GEval.BLEU
        (precisionCount, bleuStep, gleuStep)
        where
diff --git a/src/GEval/Core.hs b/src/GEval/Core.hs
index b5fa607..8dab4b7 100644
--- a/src/GEval/Core.hs
+++ b/src/GEval/Core.hs
@@ -80,6 +80,7 @@ import GEval.LogLossHashed
 import GEval.CharMatch
 import GEval.BIO
 import GEval.ProbList
+import GEval.WER
 import Data.Conduit.AutoDecompress
 import Text.Tokenizer
 
@@ -97,7 +98,7 @@ defaultLogLossHashedSize :: Word32
 defaultLogLossHashedSize = 10
 
 -- | evaluation metric
-data Metric = RMSE | MSE | BLEU | GLEU | Accuracy | ClippEU | FMeasure Double | NMI
+data Metric = RMSE | MSE | BLEU | GLEU | WER | Accuracy | ClippEU | FMeasure Double | NMI
               | LogLossHashed Word32 | CharMatch | MAP | LogLoss | Likelihood
               | BIOF1 | BIOF1Labels | LikelihoodHashed Word32 | MAE | MultiLabelFMeasure Double
               | MultiLabelLogLoss | MultiLabelLikelihood
@@ -108,6 +109,7 @@ instance Show Metric where
   show MSE  = "MSE"
   show BLEU = "BLEU"
   show GLEU = "GLEU"
+  show WER = "WER"
   show Accuracy = "Accuracy"
   show ClippEU = "ClippEU"
   show (FMeasure beta) = "F" ++ (show beta)
@@ -140,6 +142,7 @@ instance Read Metric where
   readsPrec _ ('M':'S':'E':theRest) = [(MSE, theRest)]
   readsPrec _ ('B':'L':'E':'U':theRest) = [(BLEU, theRest)]
   readsPrec _ ('G':'L':'E':'U':theRest) = [(GLEU, theRest)]
+  readsPrec _ ('W':'E':'R':theRest) = [(WER, theRest)]
   readsPrec _ ('A':'c':'c':'u':'r':'a':'c':'y':theRest) = [(Accuracy, theRest)]
   readsPrec _ ('C':'l':'i':'p':'p':'E':'U':theRest) = [(ClippEU, theRest)]
   readsPrec _ ('N':'M':'I':theRest) = [(NMI, theRest)]
@@ -175,6 +178,7 @@ getMetricOrdering RMSE     = TheLowerTheBetter
 getMetricOrdering MSE      = TheLowerTheBetter
 getMetricOrdering BLEU     = TheHigherTheBetter
 getMetricOrdering GLEU     = TheHigherTheBetter
+getMetricOrdering WER      = TheLowerTheBetter
 getMetricOrdering Accuracy = TheHigherTheBetter
 getMetricOrdering ClippEU  = TheHigherTheBetter
 getMetricOrdering (FMeasure _) = TheHigherTheBetter
@@ -525,6 +529,8 @@ gevalCore' GLEU _ = gevalCoreWithoutInput (Right . Prelude.map Prelude.words . D
         gleuAgg = CC.foldl gleuFuse (0, 0)
         gleuFuse (a1, a2) (b1, b2) = (a1+b1, a2+b2)
 
+gevalCore' WER _ = gevalCoreWithoutInput (Right . Prelude.words . unpack) (Right . Prelude.words . unpack) (uncurry werStep) averageC id
+
 gevalCore' Accuracy _ = gevalCoreWithoutInput (Right . strip) (Right . strip) hitOrMiss averageC id
                       where hitOrMiss (exp, got) =
                               -- first try to parse what we got as a probability distribution
diff --git a/src/GEval/OptionsParser.hs b/src/GEval/OptionsParser.hs
index 9f563eb..b5d12ff 100644
--- a/src/GEval/OptionsParser.hs
+++ b/src/GEval/OptionsParser.hs
@@ -169,7 +169,7 @@ metricReader = many $ option auto         -- actually `some` should be used inst
                ( long "metric"            -- --metric might be in the config.txt file...
                  <> short 'm'
                  <> metavar "METRIC"
-                 <> help "Metric to be used - RMSE, MSE, Accuracy, LogLoss, Likelihood, F-measure (specify as F1, F2, F0.25, etc.), multi-label F-measure (specify as MultiLabel-F1, MultiLabel-F2, MultiLabel-F0.25, etc.), MAP, BLEU, GLEU (\"Google GLEU\" not the grammar correction metric), NMI, ClippEU, LogLossHashed, LikelihoodHashed, BIO-F1, BIO-F1-Labels or CharMatch" )
+                 <> help "Metric to be used - RMSE, MSE, Accuracy, LogLoss, Likelihood, F-measure (specify as F1, F2, F0.25, etc.), multi-label F-measure (specify as MultiLabel-F1, MultiLabel-F2, MultiLabel-F0.25, etc.), MAP, BLEU, GLEU (\"Google GLEU\" not the grammar correction metric), WER, NMI, ClippEU, LogLossHashed, LikelihoodHashed, BIO-F1, BIO-F1-Labels or CharMatch" )
 
 altMetricReader :: Parser (Maybe Metric)
 altMetricReader = optional $ option auto
diff --git a/src/GEval/WER.hs b/src/GEval/WER.hs
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0767592
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/GEval/WER.hs
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+module GEval.WER
+       (werStep)
+       where
+
+import Data.Array
+import GEval.Common
+
+werStep :: Eq a => [a] -> [a] -> Double
+werStep expected got = (fromIntegral $ distance expected got) `safeDoubleDiv` (fromIntegral $ length expected)
+
+-- see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6718787/levenshtein-distance-cost
+distance u v = memo ! (m, n)
+   where memo = listArray ((0, 0), (m, n)) [dist i j | i <- [0..m], j <- [0..n]]
+
+         dist 0 j = j
+         dist i 0 = i
+         dist i j = minimum [
+           1 + memo ! (i, j-1),
+           1 + memo ! (i-1, j),
+           fromEnum (u' ! (i-1) /= v' ! (j-1)) + memo ! (i-1, j-1) ]
+
+         u' = listArray (0, m-1) u
+         v' = listArray (0, n-1) v
+
+         m = length u
+         n = length v
diff --git a/test/Spec.hs b/test/Spec.hs
index c0e0414..6dc5721 100644
--- a/test/Spec.hs
+++ b/test/Spec.hs
@@ -88,6 +88,9 @@ main = hspec $ do
       runGEvalTest "gleu-empty" `shouldReturnAlmost` 0.0
     it "perfect translation" $
       runGEvalTest "gleu-perfect" `shouldReturnAlmost` 1.0
+  describe "WER" $ do
+    it "simple example" $
+      runGEvalTest "wer-simple" `shouldReturnAlmost` 0.5555555555
   describe "Accuracy" $ do
     it "simple example" $
       runGEvalTest "accuracy-simple" `shouldReturnAlmost` 0.6
diff --git a/test/wer-simple/wer-simple-solution/test-A/out.tsv b/test/wer-simple/wer-simple-solution/test-A/out.tsv
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d961166
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/wer-simple/wer-simple-solution/test-A/out.tsv
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+It was a very very tall tree
+No
+A perfect match .
diff --git a/test/wer-simple/wer-simple/config.txt b/test/wer-simple/wer-simple/config.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b39834
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/wer-simple/wer-simple/config.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+--metric WER
diff --git a/test/wer-simple/wer-simple/test-A/expected.tsv b/test/wer-simple/wer-simple/test-A/expected.tsv
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edd035d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/wer-simple/wer-simple/test-A/expected.tsv
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+It is a tall tree .
+Yes
+A perfect match .