Readability Scorer — Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog & SMOG Index
Analyze your text with five readability formulas at once: Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG, ARI, and Coleman-Liau. Get a consensus reading grade level, word stats, and highlighted long sentences instantly.
Why Use a Readability Scorer for Your Content
A readability scorer tells you how easy or difficult your text is to understand. Different formulas approach the question differently, so this tool runs five at once and shows you a consensus grade level. Flesch-Kincaid is the most widely cited; Gunning Fog catches complex vocabulary; SMOG is favoured in healthcare writing; ARI and Coleman-Liau add character-level analysis.
For web content, a Flesch Reading Ease score of 60 to 70 is the sweet spot — readable by most adults without feeling dumbed down. Blog posts and landing pages targeting general audiences should aim for a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 7 to 9. Academic or technical writing can go higher.
The sentence highlighter flags any sentence over 25 words, which are the main culprits behind low readability scores. Shortening those sentences alone often raises your score by several points.
What this readability scorer does
How to use the readability scorer
Paste your text
Copy and paste any article, blog post, or document into the text area. At least 100 words gives the most accurate scores.
Analyze
Click Analyze Readability. All five readability scores calculate instantly alongside word and sentence statistics.
Review highlights
Check the preview section where sentences over 25 words are highlighted in yellow — those are your priority edits.
Revise and retest
Edit your text, paste the revised version back in, and analyze again to track how your readability score improves.
FAQ: Readability Scorer
For general web content, aim for a Flesch Reading Ease score between 60 and 70, which corresponds to a grade level of 7 to 9. This is readable by most adults without feeling oversimplified. Marketing copy and landing pages often target 70 to 80. Academic or technical writing may sit below 50.
The Flesch-Kincaid test produces two scores. The Reading Ease score runs from 0 to 100 — higher means easier to read. The Grade Level score maps the text to a U.S. school grade, so a score of 8 means an 8th-grader could understand it. Both use average sentence length and average syllables per word as inputs.
The Gunning Fog Index estimates the years of formal education needed to understand a piece of writing on a first read. It weighs average sentence length and the percentage of complex words — those with three or more syllables. A score of 12 corresponds to a high school senior. Most popular publications target a Fog score below 12.
SMOG (Simple Measure of Gobbledygook) focuses entirely on polysyllabic words — those with three or more syllables — and ignores sentence length. It was designed for health communication and tends to produce slightly higher grade estimates than Flesch-Kincaid. It is considered more accurate for texts above a 6th-grade level.
The two fastest wins are shorter sentences and simpler words. Break any sentence over 20 words in two. Replace multi-syllable words with shorter synonyms where meaning is not lost. Use active voice. Avoid jargon unless your audience demands it. After editing, paste your text back into this readability scorer to measure the improvement.
Yes. The readability scorer is completely free with no word limits and no account required. All calculations run in your browser so your content stays private.