diff --git a/contrib/talloc_count.sh b/contrib/talloc_count.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..3b03585
--- /dev/null
+++ b/contrib/talloc_count.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+#!/bin/sh
+#
+# Print a summary of how often each named object appears in a talloc report.
+#
+# usage:
+#    talloc_count.sh my_talloc_report.txt
+# or:
+#    osmo_interact_vty.py -p 4242 -c 'show talloc-context application full'  |  talloc_count.sh
+#
+# produces output like:
+#         1 struct foo
+#         1 struct log_info
+#         1 struct log_info_cat
+#        21 msgb
+#      1391 SCCP-SCOC(N)[N]
+#      1402 struct osmo_fsm_inst
+#    [...]
+
+f="$1"
+
+tmpdir="$(mktemp -d)"
+trap "rm -rf \"$tmpdir\"" EXIT
+
+# without input file, read stdin
+if [ "x$f" = "x" ]; then
+	f="$tmpdir/input"
+	cat > $f
+fi
+
+mangled="$tmpdir/mangled"
+grep contains "$f" \
+	| sed 's/[ \t]*contains.*//' \
+	| sed 's/^[ \t]*//' \
+	| sed 's/[ \t][ \t]*/ /g' \
+	| grep -v '^$' \
+	| grep -v '^[0-9]\+$' \
+	| sed 's/0x[0-9a-fA-F]\+/N/g' \
+	| sed 's/[0-9]\+/N/g' \
+	| sort \
+	> "$mangled"
+
+count() {
+	name="$1"
+	nr="$(grep -Fx "$name" "$mangled" | wc -l)"
+	printf "%6d $name\\n" $nr
+}
+
+{
+	cat "$mangled" | uniq | while read type; do
+		count "$type"
+	done
+} | sort -h