About this tool
Readability score, explained
Paste any English text to get its Flesch reading ease score, an average US grade level from five more formulas, and highlights on the hard sentences, passive voice and adverbs. Use it to check a page, an email or a help article before you publish.
How to use it
- 1Paste or type into the Your text box, or load a sample: Product copy, Help article, Legal text or Sales email.
- 2Read the Reading ease score from 0 to 100, its band, and the grade and reading age under it.
- 3Choose who it is Written for (General public, Business readers or Specialists) to see whether the text is on target.
- 4Turn on the Hard and Very hard, Passive and Adverbs highlights, edit the text in place, then click Copy report or Share link.
How it works
How the scores are calculated
Sentences end at a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark, ellipsis or line break, but not after an abbreviation such as e.g., an initial or a decimal point. Syllables are counted by rule, from groups of vowels with a silent final e dropped, so treat a few points of difference as noise.
The Flesch reading ease formula, published by Rudolf Flesch in 1948, lowers the score as sentences and words get longer. It is kept between 0 and 100 and banded on the original scale: 80 and above is Easy, 60 to 79 Plain English, 50 to 59 Fairly hard, 30 to 49 Hard, below 30 Very hard.
Five grade formulas run on the same text: Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning fog, SMOG, Coleman-Liau and the Automated readability index. Their average is the grade you see, with a reading age of grade plus five. The target is grade 8 or below for the general public, 10 for business readers and 12 for specialists.
A sentence is highlighted as hard when it has 14 words or more and its own Flesch-Kincaid grade reaches 10, and very hard from grade 14. Passive voice is a form of be or get followed by a past participle; adverbs are words ending in ly, minus common ones such as only or daily. Reading time assumes 238 words a minute, speaking time 150.
The Product copy sample, 41 words in 3 sentences, scores 32 (Hard) with an average grade of 13.7. The formulas are built for English.
Reading ease = 206.835 − 1.015 × (words / sentences) − 84.6 × (syllables / words)
When to use it
Ways people use it
Editing web copy
Bring a landing page into the Plain English band, starting with the sentences highlighted as very hard.
Writing emails people finish
Run a newsletter or a sales email through the checker and cut the long sentences and adverbs it highlights.
Simplifying documentation
Score a policy before and after a rewrite, and paste the copied report into the review.
FAQ
Questions people ask
What is a good Flesch reading ease score?
For most web pages and general audiences, 60 or more, the Plain English band, is a common target. Technical and academic texts often score lower, and that can suit their readers.
How do I improve my readability score?
Split long sentences and prefer short, common words. Start with the sentences highlighted as very hard: they are both long and dense.
What is the difference between Flesch reading ease and Flesch-Kincaid grade level?
Both use sentence length and syllables per word. Reading ease gives a score from 0 to 100 where higher is easier, while Flesch-Kincaid turns the same inputs into a US school grade. This tool shows both, plus four other grade formulas.
Can I share my score?
Share link copies an address that reopens the tool with your settings and, for texts up to 1,500 characters, the text itself.
Does readability affect SEO?
Google does not publish readability scores as a ranking signal. Clear writing helps visitors understand and stay on a page, which is what the score stands for.