Readability Checker
Score your writing with Flesch Reading Ease, grade level and Gunning Fog — live as you type.
🔒 Runs entirely in your browser — nothing you type is uploaded or stored on a server.
The Readability Checker measures how easy your writing is to read, using the same formulas professional editors and content teams rely on. Paste your text and it instantly computes your Flesch Reading Ease score, Flesch-Kincaid grade level and Gunning Fog index, along with the raw ingredients — average words per sentence, syllables per word and the share of complex words — plus a plain-English verdict on who will find your text comfortable to read.
Readability has direct, practical consequences. Web readers skim; text pitched above their comfortable level gets abandoned. Most successful web content sits around 8th–9th grade level (a Flesch score of 60–70), and plain-language guidelines for government, healthcare and finance often require it. Checking your score takes seconds and tells you immediately whether your draft is clear prose or an academic wall of text.
The scores update live as you edit, so you can watch the numbers improve as you shorten sentences and swap long words for short ones. Everything is calculated in your browser — your draft is never uploaded — and the tool works for anything from a tweet-length blurb to a full article, though scores are most reliable with at least 50 words.
How to use
- Paste your draft into the box — at least a paragraph gives meaningful scores.
- Read the Reading Ease score: higher is easier, with 60–70 the sweet spot for general audiences.
- Check the grade level — it estimates the school grade a reader needs to follow the text comfortably.
- Look at words-per-sentence and complex words to see why a score is high or low.
- Edit the text and watch the scores update live until you hit your target.
Examples
A draft scoring 45 (difficult) with 28 words per sentence tells you to split long sentences; a few edits later it reads 65 and the verdict says “plain English”.
Before sending a company-wide announcement, check it scores at least 60 so everyone — not just specialists — reads it easily.
A teacher pastes a handout and sees grade level 11.3 — too hard for a 7th-grade class — and simplifies vocabulary until it fits.
Landing-page copy at grade 6–8 converts better; the checker confirms your headline and body sit in that range.