Reading Age / Level Checker
Paste English text and get its Flesch Reading Ease, approximate grade level, and the stats behind them — analyzed in your browser, never stored. It measures the text, not you.
Every formula, benchmark source, and limitation is documented on the methodology page. Nothing you type here is stored or sent anywhere — the math runs in your browser.
Questions, answered honestly
What is a Flesch Reading Ease score?
A 0-100+ score computed from average sentence length and syllables per word: 206.835 − 1.015 × (words/sentences) − 84.6 × (syllables/words). Higher means easier — everyday prose lands around 60-80, academic writing often below 40. It estimates the demand of the text, and only for English.
Does a grade-level score measure intelligence?
No, and treating it that way is the most common misuse of these formulas. Flesch-Kincaid grade estimates roughly which school grade could comfortably read the TEXT — it measures sentence and word length on the page, and says nothing about any reader. Plenty of brilliant writing scores at grade 6, deliberately.
How accurate are readability formulas?
They are useful estimates, not truth. Both formulas see only sentence length and syllable counts — they can't detect jargon made of short words, tangled logic, or beautiful clarity in long sentences. Our syllable counter is itself a standard heuristic. Treat scores as a signal worth acting on, not a grade to worship.
Does it work for languages other than English?
Deliberately not. The Flesch formulas were calibrated on English; running them on French or Russian produces a number that looks precise and means nothing. The tool detects likely non-English text and declines to score it rather than lying to you with digits.
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