diff --git a/trees_and_graphs/top_k_frequent_heap.py b/trees_and_graphs/top_k_frequent_heap.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8acc9d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/trees_and_graphs/top_k_frequent_heap.py
@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python3
+# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
+# author: bt3gl
+
+def top_k_frequentnums: list[int], k: int) -> list[int]:
+        
+  # O(1) time
+  if k == len(nums):
+    return nums
+
+  # 1. build a hashmap element: frequency
+  counter = Counter(nums)
+
+  # 2. build a heap of k most frequent elements
+  # 3. build an output array
+  # O(N log k) time
+  return heapq.nlargest(k, counter.keys(), key=counter.get)