Readability Checker
Paste any text for an instant Flesch Reading Ease score, grade level, and full readability stats.
Readability scores
How to use the readability checker
- Paste your text into the box — articles, essays, emails, anything.
- Scores update live as you type.
- Aim for a Reading Ease of 60–70 for general audiences.
- Shorten sentences and swap long words to raise the score.
Readability tips
The Flesch Reading Ease scale runs 0–100, where higher means easier: 90–100 is comic-book simple, 60–70 is plain English most adults read comfortably, and below 30 is academic dense. The two levers are sentence length and word length — cutting a 30-word sentence in half does more for your score than any vocabulary swap. Most professional writing (news, marketing, business) targets grade 8–10, roughly ages 13–16, because clear writing is not dumbed-down writing — it is respected writing. Watch for nominalizations (verbs turned into nouns like "utilization") and throat-clearing openers; both inflate syllable counts without adding meaning. Run your draft through, fix the worst paragraph, and run it again.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good Flesch score?
60–70 is plain English for a general audience. 70–80 is fairly easy; below 50 is difficult.
What grade level should I target?
Grade 8–10 for general audiences. Technical or academic writing naturally scores higher.
How are syllables counted?
With a vowel-group heuristic that is about 95% accurate — close enough for scoring, not for linguistics research.
Does formatting affect the score?
Lists, headings, and bullet points are ignored here — paste plain paragraph text for the truest score.