A Flesch reading ease calculator that scores your text from 0 to 100 and shows which sentences and words pull the score down.
Paste your text or a link. You get its reading ease, grade level and reading time, with the sentences and words that make it hard to read marked.
Your text
Paste your text or a link to see its score.
What you paste stays in this browser. The scoring runs on your device; a link is read by my site's reader.
This free Flesch reading ease calculator scores your text from 0 to 100, where higher is easier to read.
It also marks the long sentences and long words that pull the score down, so you know what to change.
Here's how the score works, what each range means, and how to raise yours.
What is the Flesch reading ease score?
The Flesch reading ease score rates text from 0 to 100 by how easy it is to read. Rudolf Flesch published it in 1948, and it's still the score Microsoft Word shows.
The formula:
206.835 − 1.015 × (words ÷ sentences) − 84.6 × (syllables ÷ words)
So shorter sentences and shorter words both raise the score.
What your score means
Flesch's own scale, from How to Write Plain English (1979):
| Reading ease | What it means | School level |
|---|---|---|
| 90 to 100 | Very easy | Grade 5 |
| 80 to 90 | Easy | Grade 6 |
| 70 to 80 | Fairly easy | Grade 7 |
| 60 to 70 | Plain English | Grade 8 to 9 |
| 50 to 60 | Fairly difficult | Grade 10 to 12 |
| 30 to 50 | Difficult | College |
| 10 to 30 | Very difficult | College graduate |
| 0 to 10 | Extremely difficult | Professional |
What readability score to aim for
It depends on who reads it, but 2 well-known guides agree on the rough range:
- Microsoft Word says 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 writes for 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.
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. Anything over 20 words is a candidate. 1 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", "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 1 score: check the marked sentences, since the score is only an average
How to check readability in Microsoft Word
Word has the same 2 Flesch scores built in, shown after a spelling and grammar check (Microsoft Support):
This checker gives you the same 2 scores in your browser, plus 4 more formulas, reading time, and the exact sentences to fix.
Flesch Reading Ease Calculator FAQs
Questions about the Flesch reading ease calculator? Here's what to know.
Microsoft recommends 60 to 70 for most documents. Flesch called 60 to 70 plain English, about grade 8 to 9.
Flesch reading ease is 206.835 minus 1.015 times the words per sentence, minus 84.6 times the syllables per word.
Yes. Very long sentences full of long words can go below 0, and very short, simple text can go above 100.
Yes, the Flesch reading ease calculator is free, with no sign-up. The scoring runs on your device.
What you paste into the Flesch reading ease calculator stays in your browser, so it's there when you come back. The text isn't sent to a server, except a link, which my site's reader opens for you.
The Flesch reading ease calculator gives word counts and reading time in any language, but the formulas were built for English, so its scores are for English text.
For writing, the headline analyzer scores your headline against real A/B tests, and the subject line tester checks your email subject. See all my free tools.
Navid Moazzez
AI business strategist & AI OS builder
Navid Moazzez helps creators and founders master AI and build their own AI Operating System (AI OS) to automate their business and life.
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