Difference between どれぐらい, いくら, いくつ?

As the title says, I would love some help in understanding those three words and when to use them😊

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  2. Quick and dirty.

    どれぐらい – how much (in quantity)

    いくつ – how many. Can be used as how old are you, but I wouldn’t go around asking others age.

    いくら – how much (in price)

  3. They’re all “How much/many” but have slight differences.

    どれくらい is “about how much?” It can be used for asking an estimated quantity of something or something that’s not a counting number. So if I want to ask about the difficulty of a test, I would use this (テストどれくらい難しい?). Or if I want to ask how much water you drink every day, I would use this. (水どれくらい飲む?)

    いくら is “how much” but for things like money and points. Used for example when I want to ask you how much something costs. If you use this to something without context, it would be taken as asking for a price of something, just like the English “How much is this?”. (このりんごの値段はいくらですか?=How much is this apple?)

    いくつ is “how many” for counting numbers. For example if you go to a store and say りんごください (Apples please), they will probably ask いくつですか? But if you say いくつですか to someone without context, 90% of the time they would assume you’re asking their age.

  4. ikura and doregurai mean how much. Ikutsu is how many. The distinction lies in the kind of variable – continuous vs discrete, respectively.

    a quick and dirty short cut to remembering the difference between ikura and doregurai is that ikura is used with money whereas doregurai is used with things like time, distance, etc.

  5. To add to the excellent explanations already posted, いくつ is the question associated with the counting series that ends with つ (ひとつ、ふたつ、etc.) so with that in mind it’s easier to remember that it’s for countable items: how MANY not how much.

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