Free tool
Readability score checker
Paste your writing for Flesch reading ease, grade level, and Gunning Fog — plus the longest sentences, which are what actually move the numbers. No signup, and nothing leaves your browser.
What the score means
| Reading ease | Band | Typically |
|---|---|---|
| 90–100 | Very easy | Early readers, ages 8–10 |
| 80–90 | Easy | Middle grade, upmarket commercial |
| 70–80 | Fairly easy | Most commercial fiction lives here |
| 60–70 | Plain English | Literary fiction, upper YA |
| 50–60 | Fairly difficult | Dense literary, some historicals |
| 30–50 | Difficult | Academic prose, technical writing |
| 0–30 | Very difficult | Legal and scientific papers |
Bands are the standard Flesch interpretation. The right-hand column is a general guide to where work tends to land, not a measurement of particular books.
Why fiction breaks these formulas
Every readability formula was built for something other than novels. Flesch was designed to grade school textbooks; Gunning Fog was built for business writing. Both assume that easier is better, because for a safety manual it is.
Fiction does not work that way, and the formulas mislead in specific, predictable directions:
- Dialogue inflates the score. Short lines and contractions read as very easy. A dialogue-heavy chapter will score higher than a descriptive one without being better or worse.
- Names count as difficulty. A three-syllable invented name is scored exactly like a three-syllable abstract noun. Fantasy and historical fiction are penalised for having a setting.
- Rhythm is invisible. A long sentence that builds and lands is scored identically to a long sentence that rambles. The formula counts words between full stops.
- Deliberate difficulty is a choice. Plenty of admired literary fiction scores as “difficult”. That is the writer's intent, not a defect to correct.
How to use it anyway
The score is close to useless as an absolute number and genuinely useful as a relative one. Run it chapter by chapter. A book that sits at 75 throughout and then drops to 45 for one chapter is telling you something — usually that the chapter is doing exposition, and that the reader will feel the change even if they cannot name it.
That is also why the longest sentences appear above the fold in the results. Sentence length moves these formulas far more than vocabulary does, so if a score surprises you, the explanation is nearly always sitting in that list.
Common questions
What is a good readability score for a novel?
Most commercial fiction lands between 70 and 90 on Flesch reading ease, which is roughly a grade 5 to 8 reading level. That is not a sign of simplicity — it reflects short sentences, concrete words, and dialogue, which are the things good prose is made of.
Should I try to raise my readability score?
Only if the score is telling you something you already suspected. Readability formulas count syllables and sentence length; they cannot see rhythm, clarity, or meaning. A deliberately long sentence that lands well will lower your score and improve your book.
What is the difference between reading ease and grade level?
They use the same two inputs and point in opposite directions. Flesch reading ease runs 0 to 100 where higher is easier. Flesch-Kincaid grade level converts the same numbers into US school years, so higher is harder.
Is this readability checker free?
Yes, with no signup and no word limit. The scores are computed in your browser, so nothing you paste is uploaded or stored.
How are syllables counted?
With the standard vowel-group heuristic every Flesch implementation uses. It is an estimate — English spelling makes exact syllable counting impossible without a dictionary — which is one more reason to treat the score as a rough signal rather than a measurement.