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Free SEO tool
Readability checker
Paste your copy and see how hard it is to read, scored the way editors and search engines think about it. Easier copy keeps people on the page.
Readability
Paste some copy. Aim for Plain English (60+). Most people skim, and search engines favour pages that are easy to read.
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you paste is sent to us or stored.
What the score means
The main number is the Flesch reading-ease score, from 0 to 100. Higher is easier. Around 60 to 70 is plain English, the level most national newspapers aim for, and a good target for a business website. Below 50 the text is hard going for a general audience. The tool also gives a reading grade, which is roughly the school year someone would need to read it comfortably, and a couple of supporting figures like your average sentence length.
It works by looking at two things: how long your sentences are, and how many syllables your words have. Long sentences full of long words score low. Short sentences with everyday words score high. It is not judging whether your writing is clever. It is measuring how much effort it takes to get through, and for a website you almost always want that effort to be low.
Why readability is an SEO issue, not just a style one
People skim. If a paragraph looks dense, they bounce, and a quick bounce back to the search results is a signal you did not answer the question. Copy that is easy to read holds attention, gets read to the end, gets shared, and earns the links and the time-on-page that genuinely help ranking. Search engines have also grown better at understanding language, and clear, direct writing is easier for them to interpret and to quote in an AI answer.
None of this means writing down to people. It means respecting their time. Break a forty-word sentence into two. Swap utilise for use and commence for start. Put the point first. You keep every bit of the meaning and lose all of the friction. Run a page through this tool, make a few of those swaps, and you will usually watch the score climb and the copy read better at the same time.
A quick way to raise your score
Read a low-scoring paragraph aloud. The places you run out of breath are the sentences to split. The words you would never say to a customer across a counter are the ones to replace. Cut any sentence that is only there to sound professional. Then paste it back in and check. Most business pages can move from hard to plain English in one editing pass, and the page is stronger for it in every way that matters, for readers and for search.
Common questions
What readability score should I aim for?
For a general business audience, aim for a Flesch reading-ease of about 60 or higher, which is plain English. Technical audiences can go a little lower, but simpler is nearly always better online.
Does readability directly affect rankings?
Not as a single ranking factor you can point to, but it affects the things that do: how long people stay, whether they bounce, whether they share and link. Clear copy is also easier for search engines to understand and quote.
How is the score calculated?
It uses the Flesch reading-ease formula, which combines your average sentence length and average syllables per word. Shorter sentences and simpler words raise the score.
Is my text sent anywhere?
No. The whole calculation runs in your browser. Nothing you paste is uploaded or stored.
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Further reading
- Plain English Campaign ↗Long-running UK campaign for clear public writing.
- Google Search Central: creating helpful content ↗Why clear, people-first content is what Google rewards.
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