Word count + readability checker
Paste text, get word count, reading time, Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid grade level, and long-sentence flags.
Reading time assumes ~200 words per minute. Long-sentence highlighting flags anything over 30 words.
- Average length
- 10.7 words
- Longest sentence
- 32 words
- Sentences over 30 words
- 1
- Every time ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews answer a question about your industry without citing your domain, that's a click you didn't earn — and a customer who never learned about you.
Why readability still matters for SEO
Google doesn't use Flesch-Kincaid as a ranking signal, but its user-engagement signals (dwell time, scroll depth, bounce rate) all correlate strongly with how readable your content is. AI Search is even more sensitive — LLMs cite passages that read like clean answers, and skip over walls of academic prose.
For most marketing and blog writing, target a Flesch Reading Ease score of 60-70 and a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 7-9. That's the band where general-audience English newspapers and long-tail blog posts live. Any lower (denser) and you're leaving casual readers behind.
What the scores actually measure
- Flesch Reading Ease — a 0-100 score where higher means easier. The formula weights two things: average sentence length and average syllables per word. Long sentences and polysyllabic words both pull the score down.
- Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level — the same inputs translated into a US grade level. Grade 8 means “average 8th grader can read this”. Grade 14 means “college sophomore”. Lower is easier.
How to fix a bad score
- Break up long sentences. Anything over 30 words is flagged in the panel above. Split on a comma or replace a clause with a period — instantly drops the grade level.
- Swap polysyllabic words for shorter ones. “Utilize” → “use”. “Demonstrate” → “show”. “Approximately” → “about”. Almost every readability gain comes from this single move.
- Cut the throat-clearing. “In order to”, “at this point in time”, “due to the fact that” — they all add words without information. Trim them and the score climbs.
- Use bullet lists for parallel ideas. Lists count as separate sentences in the calculation, breaking up dense paragraph blocks.
FAQ
What's a good Flesch Reading Ease score for a blog post?
60-70 is the sweet spot for general-audience web writing. Lower than 50 is academic territory; above 80 is children's-book territory. If you're writing for a technical audience (devs, lawyers, doctors) you can comfortably sit in the 50s — the audience expects density.
Why does my landing page score so low?
Landing-page copy tends to use industry jargon and longer sentences to compress positioning. That's fine if your audience already knows the space — but if you're trying to reach newcomers, simplifying lifts conversions noticeably. Test the version of your hero with a 65 reading-ease score against the original.
How accurate is the syllable count?
It uses vowel-group counting, which lands within ~5% of dictionary truth on typical prose. Multi-syllable technical jargon and unusual proper names can be off by one. For ballpark readability that's plenty; for precise per-word linguistics use a phonetic dictionary lookup.
Does Google penalize hard-to-read content?
Not directly. Google has stated readability isn't a ranking factor, and Search Quality Guidelines never reference Flesch. But user-engagement signals (dwell time, bounce, scroll depth) absolutely correlate with readability — and those are ranking inputs. Easier-to-read content tends to rank better because it engages better.
Why is my reading time so long for a short article?
We use 200 words per minute as the average adult reading speed. Skimmers go faster (~300 wpm); deep readers go slower (~150 wpm). The estimate is a useful average for blog readers, not a hard prediction.
Will my pasted text be saved?
No. The whole calculation runs in your browser. The text never leaves the page.
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