--- title: "Readability Score Checker: Flesch & Grade Levels" description: "Analyze pasted text with Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid, Fog, SMOG, Coleman-Liau, and ARI plus sentence, word, and syllable counts." canonical_url: "https://webaloha.co/tools/readability-score-checker/" markdown_url: "https://webaloha.co/tools/readability-score-checker.md" date_modified: "2026-07-12T00:00:00.000Z" --- # Readability Score Checker Last updated: Jul 12, 2026 Paste your content to grade how easy it is to read. Get Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid grade, Gunning Fog, SMOG, Coleman-Liau, and ARI scores, plus word, sentence, and syllable statistics to tighten your writing. ## How the Readability Checker Works 1. **Paste text**, drop in an article, landing page, or email copy. 2. **It counts the units**, sentences, words, syllables, characters, and complex words. 3. **It applies the formulas**, six standard readability scores are calculated at once. 4. **You revise**, shorten long sentences and swap complex words to raise the score. ## Why Readability Matters - **Higher engagement**, clear writing keeps readers on the page longer. - **Wider reach**, plain English serves more visitors, including non-native speakers. - **Better conversions**, easy-to-scan copy makes offers and CTAs land. - **Machine-readable clarity**, self-contained, clearly written answers are easier for parsers to interpret, although readability alone cannot earn a citation. Combine readability with the [on-page SEO checklist](https://webaloha.co/on-page-seo-checklist-2026/) for content that ranks and converts. ## Flesch Reading Ease Scale | Score | Level | Audience | | --- | --- | --- | | 90 to 100 | Very easy | 5th grade | | 70 to 89 | Easy to fairly easy | 6th to 7th grade | | 60 to 69 | Plain English | 8th to 9th grade | | 30 to 59 | Fairly difficult | High school to college | | 0 to 29 | Very difficult | Graduate / professional | ## Flesch Reading Ease Score Bands A detailed breakdown of every Flesch Reading Ease band, the reading ease it describes, and the matching school grade level or audience. Use it to set a target score for your content; most web copy should aim for 60 or above. | Score | Reading ease | Grade level / audience | | --- | --- | --- | | **90 to 100** | Very easy | 5th grade. Easily understood by an average 11-year-old. | | **80 to 89** | Easy | 6th grade. Conversational English for consumers. | | **70 to 79** | Fairly easy | 7th grade. Comfortable reading for most adults. | | **60 to 69** | Standard (plain English) | 8th to 9th grade. The sweet spot for most web and business content. | | **50 to 59** | Fairly difficult | 10th to 12th grade. High school level. | | **30 to 49** | Difficult | College level. Dense or technical writing. | | **0 to 29** | Very difficult | College graduate. Academic, legal, or professional text. | Next steps ## Readability Score Checker related tools and articles Continue with the closest follow-up checks and guides based on this tool's topic, crawl intent, and optimization workflow. 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The tool applies the English Flesch formula and clamps the displayed result to 0 through 100. Higher values reflect shorter sentences and fewer estimated syllables per word; the labels range from Very easy to Very difficult. How is the average grade calculated? It averages five non-negative grade estimates: Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG, Coleman-Liau, and Automated Readability Index. Flesch Reading Ease is displayed separately and is not part of that average. Why do the grade formulas disagree? They weight sentence length, estimated syllables, complex words, and letter counts differently. Names, abbreviations, numbers, code, lists, and specialist vocabulary can move one formula more than another, so inspect the underlying counts. How are words, sentences, and syllables counted? Words are whitespace-separated tokens containing an ASCII letter or digit. Sentences are punctuation groups followed by whitespace or the end of text, with a minimum of one. Syllables use an English vowel-group heuristic after stripping non-letters. What counts as a complex word? A token is complex when the heuristic estimates at least three syllables, except when its first character is uppercase. That proper-name shortcut can exclude sentence-initial common words and include or exclude terms imperfectly. How much text should I analyze? Use a representative passage with several complete paragraphs. Very short samples make sentence averages and especially SMOG unstable, while navigation, tables, citations, or code can distort a whole-page sample. How should I improve a difficult result? Edit for the real audience: shorten overloaded sentences, define necessary terms, use concrete wording, and structure related ideas clearly. Do not replace precise terminology or chase a grade level that makes expert content less accurate. Is the text I paste uploaded? No. Counting, formula calculations, verdicts, and updates run in your browser. The pasted content and readability results are not sent to a Web Aloha endpoint. Free 48-Hour Website Audit Not sure what to fix first on your own website? We'll review it and tell you, in plain English. Free & non-obligatory. [Get My Free Audit 💪](https://webaloha.co/free-website-audit/) ## Want Content That Reads Well and Ranks? We plan and improve useful, well-structured content around search intent, audience needs, evidence, and measurable business outcomes. [Explore SEO Services](https://webaloha.co/seo-services/)