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Readability checker
Paste a draft. Get the Flesch–Kincaid reading ease + US grade level. Aim for 60+ for most B2C content; 50–60 is fine for technical B2B.
Quick answer
What is a grade level checker?
A grade level checker estimates how much schooling a reader needs to get through a piece of text on the first pass. Paste a draft here and you get two numbers computed in your browser: the Flesch Reading Ease score (0-100, higher is easier) and the Flesch Kincaid grade level, expressed as a US school year. Both come from the same two inputs - how long your sentences are, and how many syllables your words carry.
The two formulas, in full
Neither formula is a black box, and knowing them tells you exactly which lever moves the score. Both are computed live as you type:
- Flesch Reading Ease = 206.835 - 1.015 x (total words / total sentences) - 84.6 x (total syllables / total words)
- Flesch Kincaid Grade Level = 0.39 x (total words / total sentences) + 11.8 x (total syllables / total words) - 15.59
- Only two variables exist: average sentence length and average syllables per word. Every point of improvement comes from shortening one or simplifying the other.
What a grade level actually means, and what to aim for
A grade level of 8 means a typical US eighth-grader - roughly thirteen years old - can follow the text without rereading. That is not an insult to your audience. It is the level most general-interest publications write at, because a specialist reading on a phone between meetings has the same working memory as everyone else.
The tool bands reading ease as very easy (80+), easy (70-79), plain English (60-69), fairly difficult (50-59), difficult (30-49), and very difficult below 30. For most B2C and marketing content, aim for 60 or above, which lands around grade 8-9. Technical B2B writing sits comfortably at 50-60 and grade 10-12 - domain nouns like 'authentication' cost four syllables each and there is no honest way around that. Below 30 you are writing academic prose, which is fine for a journal and costly for a landing page.
How to lower your grade level without dumbing anything down
- Split sentences over about 25 words. Sentence length is the variable you control most easily and it moves both scores.
- Cut the connective padding - 'in order to', 'it is important to note that', 'due to the fact that' - which adds length and syllables while carrying no information.
- Swap multi-syllable Latinate verbs for short ones: use instead of utilise, help instead of facilitate, start instead of commence.
- Keep the technical nouns. Replacing 'canonical tag' with something vaguer makes the text worse and the reader more confused.
- Front-load each paragraph with its conclusion, then support it. Structure does more for comprehension than either formula measures.
Where readability fits into SEO
Google does not compute a Flesch score and rank you by it. Readability matters through behaviour instead: dense text raises bounce, shortens time on page, and stops people reaching the part of the article that would have converted them. It also affects extraction - a clean, self-contained sentence that answers a question directly is far easier for a featured snippet or an AI answer to lift and cite than the same idea buried in a 60-word subordinate clause.
Where this data comes from
Both scores are computed in your browser from the published Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch Kincaid Grade Level formulas. Sentences are detected by terminal punctuation, words by whitespace, and syllables by a standard heuristic that strips silent endings and counts vowel groups. Syllable counting by rule is an approximation - it handles ordinary English prose well and misjudges some names, acronyms, and loanwords - so treat the grade level as a band, not a decimal. Reading ease is clamped to 0-100. No text leaves your device.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good Flesch Kincaid grade level?
Grade 8 to 9 suits most general and B2C writing, and corresponds to a reading ease score in the 60s. Technical B2B content typically lands at grade 10-12 and reads fine there because the vocabulary is genuinely required. Above grade 14 you are writing academic prose. There is no universally correct target - match the level your actual audience reads at.
Is readability a Google ranking factor?
No. Google does not calculate a readability score and rank pages by it. The effect is indirect but real: hard-to-read pages lose readers before the point of conversion, and clear, self-contained sentences are much more likely to be pulled into featured snippets and AI answers. Write for comprehension and the search benefit follows.
How is the Flesch Reading Ease score calculated?
Reading Ease = 206.835 - 1.015 x (words / sentences) - 84.6 x (syllables / words). It produces a 0-100 scale where higher means easier. Only two things affect it: average sentence length and average syllables per word. Shortening sentences and preferring shorter words are the only ways to raise it.
Why does this grade level checker differ from Word or my CMS plugin?
Every implementation counts syllables slightly differently, and syllable counting by rule is inherently approximate - hyphenated compounds, acronyms and proper nouns all get judged inconsistently. Sentence detection varies too, especially around abbreviations. Expect a spread of roughly one grade level between tools. Use one tool consistently and track the direction of change rather than comparing absolute numbers.
Does lowering the grade level mean simplifying my ideas?
No. The formulas measure sentence length and syllable count, not conceptual depth. You can explain a complicated architecture at grade 8 by splitting sentences, cutting filler, and keeping technical nouns where they carry meaning. What drops is the syntactic overhead between the reader and the idea, not the idea.
Does readability matter for AI search and citations?
It helps. AI answer engines lift short, self-contained statements that resolve a question without needing surrounding context. A 45-word sentence with three nested clauses is hard to quote cleanly; a direct 20-word answer under a matching heading is easy. Improving readability and improving citability tend to be the same edit.
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