Free Reading Level Checker (+ Guide)

What is a reading level?

A reading level is the school grade a reader needs to understand a text easily. It's measured with readability formulas that count sentence length and word length. The best known is the Flesch-Kincaid grade level.

In the UK, the same idea is called reading age: a reading age of 9 is about US grade 4.

What readability score to aim for

It depends on who reads it, but 2 well-known guides agree on the rough range:

• Microsoft Word – most documents should score 60 to 70 on reading ease, and a grade level of about 7.0 to 8.0 (Microsoft Support).
• The NHS – a reading age of 9 to 11, which is about US grade 4 to 6, with sentences of up to 20 words and paragraphs of up to 3 sentences (NHS service manual).

Experts reading about their own field can take more, so pick who it's for above and the checker holds your text to that range.

The 6 formulas behind the grade

How to make your writing easier to read

The formulas only count 2 things, sentence length and word length, so those are the 2 levers:

• Split long sentences – keep to 20 words or fewer, one idea per sentence.
• Use the short word – "use" not "utilize", "start" not "commence", "help" not "assist".
• Say who does what – "The team wrote the report", not "The report was written".
• Cut adverbs that add nothing – "very", "really" and "actually" rarely earn their place.
• Keep paragraphs short – 3 sentences or fewer reads well on a phone.

• Writing for the formula, not the reader – short choppy sentences can score well and still read badly
• Swapping every long word – some ideas need their exact term, like "photosynthesis" in a biology post
• Trusting one score – check the marked sentences, since the score is only an average

Who is the reading level checker for?

It's for anyone writing for a set audience, from students to customers:

• Readability checker – people who want every score at once
• Flesch-Kincaid calculator – writers matching a grade
• Flesch reading ease calculator – anyone who needs the ease score
• Writing prompt generator – writers who need a start

More tools like these are on my free tools page.