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A readability checker scores how hard your writing is to read and tells you the rough school grade a reader needs to follow it. This tool computes four standard formulas, Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning Fog, and SMOG, live as you type. Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
Flesch Reading Ease runs from 0 to 100, and higher is easier. A score of 60 to 70 is plain English that most adults read comfortably. Above 80 is very easy, the level of conversational writing. Below 30 is difficult, the level of academic and legal prose. The formula weighs two things: long sentences and long words both pull the score down.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level converts the same inputs into a US school grade. A grade of 8 means an average eighth grader can read the text. Most web writing aims for grade 7 to 9. Technical documentation and contracts often land at grade 13 and up, which is a signal to simplify if a general audience has to understand it.
Gunning Fog estimates the years of formal education a reader needs, with extra weight on complex words of three or more syllables. A Fog index of 8 is easy; 12 is the ceiling for text meant for a wide audience; above 17 is graduate level.
SMOG predicts the grade needed for full comprehension, and it is the formula favored in healthcare and safety writing because it targets near-complete understanding rather than the average. SMOG is most reliable on longer passages of thirty sentences or more, so on short text treat it as a rough indicator.
There is no single right score. The target depends on the audience. Marketing and blog content aims for Flesch Reading Ease in the 60 to 70 band, grade 7 to 9, because that is where the widest audience reads without friction. News writing sits around grade 8. Government plain-language guidelines push for grade 8 or below. Academic journals accept grade 13 and up because the readers are specialists. The point of the checker is not to chase a number but to confirm your writing matches the people who have to read it.
Lowering the grade level of web copy. Pages that read at grade 7 to 9 keep more readers than pages that read at grade 14. Paste a draft, read the grade, and shorten the sentences and words that push it up.
Meeting plain-language requirements. Government, healthcare, and insurance writing often must hit a specified grade level. The checker confirms compliance before you publish.
Editing for a specific audience. Writing for children, English learners, or a general consumer audience means targeting a lower grade. Writing for specialists allows a higher one. The score makes the target concrete.
Tightening academic and technical prose. A grade-18 paragraph is usually a sign of sentences that run too long. The checker flags it; splitting sentences brings it down without dumbing the content down.
Comparing drafts. Run an old version and a new version and watch the score move. It is a fast, objective way to confirm an edit actually made the text easier.
All four formulas use the same raw ingredients: the number of words, the number of sentences, and the number of syllables. Reading ease and grade level depend on average sentence length, words divided by sentences, and average word length in syllables, syllables divided by words. Gunning Fog and SMOG add a count of complex words, those with three or more syllables. Syllables are estimated with the standard vowel-group method, which is accurate enough for scoring even though it occasionally miscounts an unusual word.
Because the formulas were designed for prose, they assume normal sentences and paragraphs. Bullet lists, headings, code, and tables can distort the scores, since the formulas read a heading with no terminal punctuation as part of the next sentence. For the cleanest reading, score body paragraphs rather than whole pages with mixed structure.
Search engines do not rank by Flesch score directly, but readability and ranking are linked through reader behavior. Text that is easy to read keeps people on the page longer and earns more of the engagement signals search engines do reward. For most web content, writing at grade 7 to 9 is the safe target. It does not mean writing simply; it means writing clearly, with shorter sentences and fewer needlessly long words. Pair the readability check with a word count for length and a character count for titles and meta descriptions.
Type or paste text and the four scores update on every keystroke. The tool counts words by whitespace, sentences by terminal punctuation, and syllables by vowel groups, then plugs those into the four formulas. A short verdict translates the Flesch Reading Ease into plain language so you do not have to memorize the bands. Everything is computed locally, so your text never leaves the page. You can confirm that in your browser network panel.
For most web and business writing, aim for a Flesch Reading Ease of 60 to 70 and a grade level of 7 to 9. That is the band where the widest audience reads comfortably. Specialist or academic writing can sit higher because the readers are experts.
Flesch Reading Ease is a 0 to 100 scale where higher is easier. Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, and SMOG all return a US school grade. They weight long words and long sentences slightly differently, so they rarely match exactly. Reading several together gives a fuller picture than any one alone.
The formulas assume normal sentences ending in punctuation. Headings without periods, bullet lists, and code can confuse the sentence count and skew the result. For the cleanest score, paste body paragraphs rather than a whole page of mixed structure.
It uses the standard vowel-group estimate, which is accurate enough for scoring. It occasionally miscounts an unusual word, but across a paragraph the small errors average out and the scores stay reliable.
The formulas were calibrated for English, so the scores are only meaningful for English text. Word and sentence counts work for any space-separated language, but the grade levels will not be valid outside English.
No. The scoring runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server, logged, or stored. You can verify by watching your browser network tab stay empty as you type.