Text Tools

Score how hard your writing is to read

Paste your text for a Flesch Reading Ease score and a grade level, plus the two averages the formulas are built from — so you can see which one to change.

Reading ease

0-100, higher is easier

Grade level

US school years

Words per sentence

Syllables per word

Not enough text to score yet

What the score means

  • 90–100 — understood by an average 11-year-old
  • 60–70 — plain English, the target for most web writing
  • 30–50 — university reading
  • 0–30 — graduate level

Both scores come from sentence length and syllable count alone, so they measure how hard the writing is to read, not whether it is any good.

  • Runs in your browser
  • No account required
  • Free to use

How it works

01

Two numbers from the same two inputs

Both formulas use only average sentence length and average syllables per word. Flesch Reading Ease runs 0 to 100 with higher being easier; Flesch-Kincaid converts the same inputs into US school years. Seeing both averages is what makes the score actionable — a bad score is either long sentences or long words, and the fix is different for each.

02

Syllables are counted by a heuristic

English spelling does not encode syllables reliably, so every implementation counts vowel groups and accepts some error. That is not a shortcut: the formulas themselves were calibrated against counts made this way, so matching the method matters more than being right about any individual word.

03

An empty document scores nothing

Both formulas divide by the sentence count. With no sentences that is a division by zero, which produces an authoritative-looking number that means nothing — so the tool says there is not enough text instead.

What it does

Reading ease and grade level

Both live, with a plain-English verdict rather than a bare number.

The averages behind the score

Words per sentence and syllables per word, so you can tell whether to shorten sentences or simplify vocabulary.

A scale you can read

What 90, 60 and 30 actually mean, alongside the score, instead of leaving you to look it up.

Private

Scored in your browser, with no upload and no account.

Practical advice

Getting a better result

  • Aim for 60–70 for general web writing. That is “plain English”, understood by most readers without effort.
  • If the score is low, look at words per sentence first — it is usually the faster fix, and splitting one long sentence often moves the score several points.
  • The score measures difficulty, not quality. Well-written technical writing scores badly and is still well written.
  • Very short samples score erratically. A few hundred words gives a much steadier reading.

Questions

Things people ask

What is a good Flesch Reading Ease score?

60 to 70 is plain English and a sensible target for most web writing — understood comfortably by 13- to 15-year-olds. Above 80 is very easy and suits general audiences; below 30 is graduate-level and appropriate only for specialist readers.

How accurate is the syllable counting?

It is a vowel-group heuristic and gets some words wrong, as every implementation does — English spelling simply does not encode syllable boundaries. It matters less than it sounds: the formulas were calibrated against counts made the same way, so the scores stay comparable with published guidance.

Does a low score mean my writing is bad?

No. It means the sentences are long or the words are, which is sometimes exactly right — legal, medical and technical writing all score low by necessity. The score is useful when your audience is general and your score says it is not.

Who builds these

Free tools by day. Websites that earn their keep by trade.

KuConvert is built by KUDUY, a web design and development agency. From custom WordPress builds to SEO and e-commerce, everything they do is engineered to bring you more qualified traffic and turn it into revenue.

  • Fixed scope, no surprise invoices

    Most sites ship in four to eight weeks with the scope and the price agreed up front.

  • SEO from day one

    Search is designed into the build — structure, schema and Core Web Vitals — not retrofitted.

  • A team, not a ticket queue

    A project manager, a designer and a developer you can actually reach.

Need your whole site to load this fast?

Images are usually the heaviest thing on a page and the easiest win. KUDUY works on site speed, image delivery and Core Web Vitals for teams who would rather not do it by hand.

This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded.