PURPOSE: to compare the performance in vocabulary test of children with or without phonological disorder. METHODS: the study involved 150 children, 75 of the Phonological Disorder Group (PDG) and 75 of the Typical Phonological Developmental Group (TPDG), with age group ranging from 6:0 to 6:11 years, of both genders, with medium socioeconomic level. Auditory and speech-language screening were accomplished, and after that the children were submitted to the Childs Phonological Assessment and a Vocabulary Test. The answers were analyzed considering the number of Usual Verbal Designations (UVD), No Designations (ND) and Processes of Substitutions (PS) by conceptual field. Finally, data were tabulated and submitted to statistical analysis using the T-Test for independent samples and the significance level was considered 5%. RESULTS: PDG has obtained a smaller number of UVD that the TPDG, being difference statistically significant for all conceptual fields. Besides this, the occurrence of ND e PS were higher for PDG in all of conceptual fields, being the difference statistically significant for four and eight conceptual fields, respectively. Still, the occurrences of PS were larger than the ND for the two groups. CONCLUSION: the results indicated that PDG showed lower performance in the vocabulary test, and it were verified by the smaller occurrence of UVD and larger of ND and PS than the TPDG. These findings showed that have a relation between the phonological disorder and vocabulary deficit. So, it is important to evaluates the vocabulary of the children with phonological disorders in order to assist the therapy.