Readability Checker

What is a readability score?

A readability score estimates how hard your writing is to understand, based on measurable features like sentence length and word complexity. This tool runs four established formulas (Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade, Gunning Fog, and Coleman-Liau) and adds sentence-length analysis and passive-voice detection, so you get both a score and concrete reasons behind it.

Reading the Flesch scores

Flesch Reading Ease runs from 0 to 100, where higher is easier: 60 to 70 is plain, comfortable English for a general audience, while below 30 is dense and academic. Flesch-Kincaid Grade and Gunning Fog instead express difficulty as a US school grade level, so a score of 8 means an average eighth-grader could follow it.

What level should you aim for?

For most web content, marketing, and general audiences, aim for roughly a grade 7 to 9 reading level (Flesch Reading Ease around 60 to 70). This is not about dumbing down; even expert readers prefer clear, efficient writing. Specialist or technical audiences tolerate higher complexity, but clarity always helps comprehension and keeps readers on the page.

How to improve your score

• Shorten long sentences; split any that run past about 25 words.
• Prefer short, common words over long or jargon ones where you can.
• Replace passive voice with active voice ("we tested it", not "it was tested").
• Break dense paragraphs into smaller chunks and use lists where appropriate.