Readability Score Checker
Score English text with Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG, Coleman-Liau and ARI, see a consensus grade, and find the sentences to fix.
The consensus is the average of the 5 grade-level formulas on this page — Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG, Coleman-Liau and ARI — so it is the one grade to act on when they disagree.
Reading Ease runs 0–100 and higher is easier: 60–70 is plain English most adults read comfortably, 30–50 is college-level prose, and below 30 is legal or academic text.
Grade Level is the US school year a reader needs to follow the text — 8 means a 13–14-year-old. Aim for 6–8 for the general public, 7–9 for help pages and marketing copy, and 10 or above only where readers expect specialist terms.
| 90–100 | Very easy |
| 80–90 | Easy |
| 70–80 | Fairly easy |
| 60–70 | Standard |
| 50–60 | Fairly difficult |
| 30–50 | Difficult |
| 0–30 | Very difficult |
The formulas were fitted to English, and syllables are estimated from vowel groups. Text mostly in another alphabet, such as Korean, Japanese, Chinese or Russian, gets no score. Spanish, German and other languages in the Latin alphabet are scored with the English coefficients, so compare such a score only with texts in the same language.
Measure how easy your writing is to read
Paste any article, email, or essay and instantly see the standard readability scores. The Flesch Reading Ease runs from about 0 to 100 — higher means easier, where 60–70 is plain English and scores above 90 read like a children's book. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level translates the same data into a U.S. school grade, so a result of 8 means roughly an eighth-grade reading level. Beside them sit the Gunning Fog, SMOG, Coleman-Liau and ARI grades and a Consensus grade that averages all the grade formulas. Every score updates live as you type, the Reading Ease score is also labelled with its standard difficulty band — from Very easy to Very difficult — and the underlying word, sentence, and syllable counts the formulas are built on are shown too. Under the scores the text is drawn again with long sentences shaded and complex words underlined, and What to change first lists the sentences to split and the words to swap. A line under the score cards gives the grade to aim for by who will read the text — the general public, help pages and marketing copy, or specialists — and Download saves the whole report as a text file: every figure Copy gives, then What to change first. Ticking “Keep this text” keeps the text in this browser and brings it back on your next visit; unticking it removes the text, and a shared link's text is not saved over a kept draft until you edit it. Use it to simplify dense paragraphs, hit a target reading level for a wider audience, or compare drafts.
How the scores are calculated
Sentences are detected by runs of ., !, and ?; words are matched as runs of letters, digits, or underscores; and syllables use a vowel-group heuristic — each cluster of vowels counts once, a silent trailing e is dropped, and every word counts at least one syllable. From those, Reading Ease is 206.835 − 1.015 × (words ÷ sentences) − 84.6 × (syllables ÷ words) and the Grade Level is 0.39 × (words ÷ sentences) + 11.8 × (syllables ÷ words) − 15.59. The syllable step is a heuristic, so unusual spellings can be off by one, but the scores are stable and reproducible for everyday English prose. The formulas were fitted to English, so text mostly in another alphabet, such as Korean, Japanese, Chinese or Russian, gets no score and no syllable count, while its word and sentence counts are still shown; Spanish, German and other languages in the Latin alphabet are scored with the English coefficients, so compare such a score only with texts in the same language.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good Flesch Reading Ease score?
For a general audience, aim for 60 or above — that maps to plain, easily readable English around an eighth-grade level. Scores from 50 to 60 are fairly difficult and 30 to 50 difficult, typical of academic or technical writing; 80 to 90 is easy and 90 or above very easy.
Why does the grade level sometimes look negative or very low?
The Flesch-Kincaid formula has no floor at zero. Very short, simple sentences with mostly one-syllable words can produce a grade near or below zero. That just means the text is extremely easy to read; it is expected for sentences like "The cat sat."
What is the consensus grade, and how does it say what to fix?
The Consensus grade is the average of the grade-level formulas on the page — Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG, Coleman-Liau and ARI — so it is the one grade to act on when they disagree. Under Where the trouble is, the text is shown again with each long sentence shaded and each complex word underlined (the legend gives the thresholds), and What to change first lists the longest sentences to split and the most-used complex words to swap, or says there is nothing to fix.
Can I share the text, see the whole band table, or tell when a sample is too short?
Yes. Copy link builds a link holding the text itself, so the scores are worked out again when it is opened; a text too long for a link is refused with a sentence rather than cut short. Under the scores, “Reading Ease bands” lists every band with its range and marks the one the text is in. On a passage shorter than the formulas were fitted to, a line says so and that the numbers are rough.
Can I save the report, or tell what grade to aim for?
Yes. Download saves the report as readability-report.txt — every figure Copy gives, then What to change first with the sentences to split and the words to shorten, or the line saying there is nothing to fix. Under the score cards, a line says what the Grade Level means and which grade to aim for by who will read the text: the general public, help pages and marketing copy, or readers who expect specialist terms.
Does it score Korean or other languages?
It scores text mostly in the Latin alphabet. Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Russian and other text mostly in another alphabet get no score: the formulas count English vowel letters as syllables, so such text would come out as very easy whatever it says. The page says why instead, and the word and sentence counts are still shown. Spanish, German and other languages in the Latin alphabet are scored with the English coefficients, so compare such a score only with texts in the same language.
Can it keep my text for next time?
Only if you ask. Ticking “Keep this text” keeps the text in this browser as you type and brings it back on your next visit; nothing is sent anywhere. Unticking it removes the kept text. Opening a shared link does not save the link's text over a kept draft until you edit it, and a very long text is not kept, with a line saying so.