Readability Score
A reading-ease score for your text, the grade level that goes with it, and — more useful than either — the exact sentences making it hard.
What the number means
Flesch Reading Ease runs from about 0 to 100, and higher is easier. It is built from two things only: how long your sentences are, and how many syllables your words have.
- 90–100 very easy — a young child could read it
- 60–70 plain English — what most newspapers aim at, and a good target for anything public
- 30–50 difficult — academic or official writing
- under 30 very difficult — a degree helps
The grade beside it is the American school year needed to read the text comfortably. Grade 8 is roughly a thirteen-year-old, and is the usual advice for writing meant for everybody.
What the number cannot see
It counts syllables and full stops. It does not read. So it does not know whether your text is clear, only whether it is short.
You can get a perfect score out of nonsense: chop every sentence in two, replace long words with short ones, and the number climbs while the meaning falls apart. Treat it as a smoke alarm, not a judge — a low score is a reason to reread, never a reason to start hacking sentences in half.
It also has nothing to say about technical writing. A page about haemoglobin has to say haemoglobin, and no rewording makes that word shorter. A specification full of necessary long words will score badly and be exactly as clear as it should be.
Why the sentence list matters more
The single number tells you there is a problem somewhere. The list underneath tells you where. Almost always a handful of very long sentences are dragging the whole text down, and splitting those three sentences does more than rewriting every other word on the page.
Syllables are counted by a rule of thumb
English spelling has no reliable relationship to its sounds, so
there is no way to count syllables exactly without a dictionary of
every word. This page uses the usual set of rules — count the
vowel groups, drop a silent e, and so on — and
gets most words right and some words wrong. Every readability tool
does the same thing, which is why two of them rarely agree
exactly.
Frequently asked questions
What score should I aim for?
Around 60 to 70 for anything a general audience reads, which is roughly grade 8. Official and academic writing sits far lower and is not necessarily wrong for its readers.
Why does another site give me a different score?
Because syllable counting is a guess. English spelling does not reliably tell you how a word sounds, so every tool uses slightly different rules and lands on slightly different numbers. Treat the score as a band, not a measurement.
Is a low score always bad?
No. Technical writing often has to use long words, and shortening them would lose the meaning. A low score means 'this will be hard work to read', which is sometimes a fair price and sometimes a warning.
Can I cheat it?
Easily, and that is worth knowing. Splitting every sentence and swapping in short words raises the score whether or not the writing improves. The number is a prompt to look, not a target to hit.
What counts as a sentence?
Text ending in a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark. Abbreviations with full stops in them will be miscounted as sentence endings, which nudges the score - another reason to read the number loosely.
Is my text sent anywhere?
No. Everything happens in JavaScript inside your own browser. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is saved - close the tab and it is gone.