Readability checker
Text & WritingNo. 54 / 84
Paste any text and get a Flesch Reading Ease score, a Flesch-Kincaid grade and the word, sentence and syllable counts behind them.
writing simply is hard. we handed it a number and a school grade anyway.
work surface
Math, not advice — results are indicative.Read the disclaimer.
most-used utilities
Blog post
Keep a 900-word article near grade 8 so the argument survives the scroll.
Client email
Catch the paragraph that sounds like a legal notice before you hit send.
School essay
See whether your essay reads at the level you are actually writing for.
pro tips
Aim for 60 to 70 on reading ease for web copy. Below 50, readers start skimming; above 80, the text may sound a little too simple for the subject.
One 45-word sentence can drag a whole paragraph down. Split it in two and watch the grade fall without touching the vocabulary.
Check the syllable count before trusting the grade. Product names and acronyms inflate it, and no formula knows how your brand is pronounced.
what it does
Paste a paragraph, an email or an entire article and the numbers update as you type. You get a Flesch Reading Ease score from 0 to 100, a Flesch-Kincaid grade level, and the raw counts behind both: words, sentences and syllables. No button, no upload, no one reading over your shoulder.
It is useful anywhere clarity matters more than sounding clever: blog posts, help docs, school essays, product pages, internal notes that people are actually supposed to act on. Run a draft through it before publishing and find out whether a busy reader will glide or quietly give up halfway.
The math is old and boring, which is why it works. A 100-word paragraph with 6 sentences and 150 syllables lands around 63 on reading ease and just under grade 9 — plain English, roughly a high school freshman. Shorten the sentences and the grade drops without changing a single fancy word.
Syllables are estimated by counting vowel groups, so names, acronyms and technical terms can fool it. Sentences are counted by punctuation, which means a missing period merges two into one. Treat the score as a second opinion rather than a verdict, and remember that plain wording still beats a perfect number.
quick answers
What counts as a good Flesch Reading Ease score?
For general web writing, 60 to 70 is the comfortable range: plain enough to scan, not so plain that it sounds patronizing. Academic or legal text often lands in the 20s, which is accurate rather than impressive.
Does the checker work for languages other than English?
No. Both formulas were built around English sentence and syllable patterns, and the vowel-group estimate falls apart elsewhere. Paste Spanish or German and you will get a number, just not a meaningful one.
Why is the grade level lower than I expected?
The Flesch-Kincaid scale measures sentence length and syllables per word, not the difficulty of the ideas. A short sentence about quantum physics can score at grade 6, because the formula has never met quantum physics.