Readability Checker
TextScore any text for readability with Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid grade level, and Gunning fog, and see which of your sentences are dragging the score down.
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
Paste at least a couple of sentences. Readability formulas need sentence and word counts to work, so a single phrase will not produce a meaningful score.
Flesch score & grade level
Writing that feels clear to the person who wrote it is often a grade or two harder than they think, because familiarity hides complexity. Readability formulas measure the two things that reliably make prose hard — long sentences and long words — and turn them into a number you can act on. This tool scores your text on the standard measures and then points at your longest sentences, since shortening those is what moves the score fastest.
How to check readability
- 1
Paste your text
An article, email, landing page, or document. A couple of sentences is the minimum for a meaningful score.
- 2
Read the score
Get Flesch Reading Ease out of 100, with the grade level and reading difficulty band it corresponds to.
- 3
Fix the worst sentences
Your longest sentences are listed with their word counts. Splitting those is the quickest way to improve the score.
Good to know
- Flesch Reading Ease of 60–70 is plain English at roughly an 8th to 9th grade level, and is the usual target for web and marketing copy.
- Sentence length carries more weight in the formula than word length, so splitting long sentences improves the score faster than swapping vocabulary.
- Syllable counts are estimated with the standard vowel-group heuristic — reliable in aggregate, wrong on some individual words.
- Readability is not a direct ranking factor, but it affects whether people understand and stay on the page, which search engines do measure.
What people use it for
- Checking an article reads at the level your audience expects
- Meeting a plain-language requirement for public sector or healthcare copy
- Simplifying dense technical writing before it goes to a general audience
Frequently asked questions
What score should I aim for?+
For general web and marketing copy, 60–70 on Flesch Reading Ease — plain English at around an 8th to 9th grade level. Technical documentation for specialists can reasonably sit lower.
How do I improve a low score?+
Shorten sentences first; sentence length is the heaviest factor in the formula. Then swap long words for short ones. The tool lists your longest sentences because those give the fastest improvement.
How accurate is the syllable count?+
It is an estimate. Counting English syllables exactly needs a pronunciation dictionary, so this uses the standard vowel-group heuristic. It is reliable in aggregate but wrong on some individual words.
Does readability affect SEO?+
Not as a direct ranking factor. It affects whether people stay and understand the page, which is what search engines actually measure through behaviour.
Is my data sent to a server?+
No. Scoring text happens entirely in your browser using built-in web APIs. Nothing is uploaded, stored, or logged.
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