SEO Tools

Readability Checker

Check the readability score of any text online for free — Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid grade level, and sentence stats, instantly inside your browser.

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Readability CheckerLive
Overview

What does this checker measure?

Readability scores estimate how easy a piece of text is to read, based on sentence length and word complexity. This tool calculates the Flesch Reading Ease score (0-100, higher is easier) and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (the U.S. school grade needed to understand the text on a first read).

It's useful for confirming that content matches its intended audience — marketing copy usually aims for an easy, conversational level, while technical documentation can reasonably score lower.

Guide

How to use it

1Paste your article, page copy, or draft
2Review the Flesch Reading Ease and grade level scores
3Check average sentence length and syllables per word
4Simplify long sentences and complex words if needed

How the score is calculated

Both formulas use sentence count, word count, and syllable count. Flesch Reading Ease is 206.835 - 1.015 × (words/sentences) - 84.6 × (syllables/words). The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level uses 0.39 × (words/sentences) + 11.8 × (syllables/words) - 15.59. Syllables are estimated using vowel-group counting, which is standard for this kind of tool and close to, though not perfectly identical to, a dictionary syllable count.

Why it helps

Features & benefits

Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
Average sentence length and syllables per word
Plain-language interpretation of the score
Live results as you type
100% private — nothing leaves the device

Why this runs entirely in your browser

Draft content is often unpublished, so nothing is uploaded. Scoring runs in JavaScript locally in the tab, which means it keeps working offline once the page has loaded and nothing pasted into it persists after the tab is closed.

Common uses

Checking that landing page copy stays easy to read, matching content difficulty to a target audience's reading level, or comparing drafts before and after an edit pass.

Frequently asked questions

A few things people usually want to know before trusting the numbers.

60-70 is considered plain English, easily understood by 13-15 year olds. Scores above 80 are very easy; below 30 are best suited to college-level readers.

It estimates the U.S. school grade a reader would need to understand the text on a first read — a score of 8 means roughly an 8th-grade reading level.

By counting vowel groups per word, a standard approximation used by readability tools — it's very close to, though not always identical to, a dictionary count.

Shorten long sentences, replace complex or multi-syllable words with simpler alternatives, and break up dense paragraphs.

No. All scoring happens locally in your browser. Nothing pasted here is sent to a server, stored, or shared.