Free Readability Score Checker
Paste your text to get its Flesch Reading Ease score and U.S. grade level, plus sentence and word stats — so you can make it clearer and easier to read.
What is a readability score?
A readability score estimates how hard your text is to read, based on sentence length and word complexity. The best-known is the Flesch Reading Ease score, which runs from 0 (very hard) to 100 (very easy). A related metric, the Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level, tells you the U.S. school grade needed to understand the text.
For most web content, aim for a Reading Ease of 60 or above (roughly an 8th-grade reading level). That is not "dumbing down" — even expert readers prefer clear, scannable writing, especially on a screen.
Flesch Reading Ease — what the score means
- 90–100: Very easy — 5th grade.
- 80–89: Easy — 6th grade.
- 70–79: Fairly easy — 7th grade.
- 60–69: Plain English — 8th–9th grade (the sweet spot for blogs).
- 50–59: Fairly difficult — 10th–12th grade.
- 30–49: Difficult — college.
- 0–29: Very difficult — graduate / specialist.
Why readability helps your SEO
Google does not score readability directly, but it rewards the behaviour clear writing produces: people stay longer, read more, and bounce less. Clear content also wins more featured snippets and is easier for AI search engines to quote. And as more discovery shifts to AI assistants, concise, well-structured writing is what gets cited.
How to improve your readability score
- Shorten sentences. Aim for an average under 20 words; break any sentence over 30.
- Prefer short words. Swap "utilise" for "use", "approximately" for "about".
- Use subheadings, lists and short paragraphs. White space lifts comprehension.
- Write like you speak. Contractions and an active voice read faster.
- Cut the warm-up. Get to the point in the first sentence.