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Plaintools

Readability checker

Paste your article, blog post, or documentation to analyze its readability and school grade level. The tool calculates Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning Fog Index, Automated Readability Index (ARI), Coleman-Liau, and provides detailed metrics on words per sentence, syllable counts, and reading time.

Calculates client-side · Text never leaves your device

Flesch Reading Ease54.1 / 100

Fairly Difficult (10th–12th grade)

High school level. Typical of business reports and technical tutorials.

Flesch-Kincaid GradeGrade 9.1

9th Grade (High school)

US school grade level required to comfortably read this text on first pass.

Elementary (1–5)Middle (6–8)High (9–12)College (13+)

Additional Reading Formulas

Gunning Fog Index

11.3

Standard audience

Automated Readability (ARI)

11.2

Approx. grade 11

Coleman-Liau Index

13.3

Letter & sentence based index

Text Structure & Content Statistics

Words

95

Sentences

7

Syllables

156

Paragraphs

3

Words / Sentence

13.6

Syllables / Word

1.64

Complex Words (3+ syl)

14 (14.7%)

Characters (w/ spaces)

618

Characters (no spaces)

522

Est. Reading Time

~0.4 min

Est. Speaking Time

~0.7 min

Example

Standard blog post readability

A 300-word article with 15 words per sentence and 1.4 syllables per word scores ~68 on Flesch Reading Ease (Standard / Plain English, suited for an 8th-grade reading level), with an estimated reading time of 1.3 minutes.

Related: Text diff checker, Case converter

FAQ

Does this readability checker send text to external APIs or LLMs?
No. Readability scoring uses deterministic linguistic formulas running 100% in your browser. No text is sent to any server, third-party API, or AI model.
What is a good Flesch Reading Ease score?
For general web content, consumer products, and public guides, a score between 60 and 70 (Standard / Plain English) is recommended. Scores between 70 and 80 are easy to read (7th grade level). Scores below 50 reflect dense academic, technical, or legal prose.
How does the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level formula work?
The formula is: 0.39 × (total words ÷ total sentences) + 11.8 × (total syllables ÷ total words) − 15.59. It indicates the number of years of formal education in the US school system typically required to understand the passage.
What counts as a complex word in readability formulas?
In the Gunning Fog Index and related metrics, words with three or more syllables (excluding common suffixes like -es, -ed, and -ing) are classified as complex or polysyllabic words.
How do I calculate Flesch Reading Ease without this page?
Tokenize text into words (regex /[^a-zA-Z0-9_-]+/) and sentences (split on [.!?]+ followed by whitespace, protecting common abbreviations like Mr. and Dr.). For each word, count syllables by matching vowel clusters [aeiouy]+, deducting silent trailing 'e' and non-t/d 'ed' endings, and adding 1 for consonant+'-le' endings (minimum 1 syllable per word). Compute avgWordsPerSentence = words / sentences and avgSyllablesPerWord = syllables / words. Flesch Reading Ease = 206.835 - 1.015 * avgWordsPerSentence - 84.6 * avgSyllablesPerWord. Clamp score to 0..100. Flesch-Kincaid Grade = 0.39 * avgWordsPerSentence + 11.8 * avgSyllablesPerWord - 15.59.