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Reading Level Checker

Paste your draft — or any live URL — and this reading level checker scores it with five academic formulas, tells you the grade level, and shows exactly what to simplify.

Free to use — up to 10,000 characters. Sign in free for 40,000 characters; paid plans get 80,000 characters.

How the readability checker works

1

Paste text or a URL

Drop in raw copy, or give the readability checker a live page URL and we extract the main content automatically.

2

Five formulas run at once

Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG and Coleman-Liau — the reading level checker takes the median so one quirky formula cannot skew your readability score.

3

Read the grade, fix the flags

You get a grade level, a plain-English verdict and counts of long sentences and complex words — the two levers that move every readability rating fastest.

Why use this reading level checker

A real grade level

Answers “what grade level is my writing” with a number and a label — 8th grade reads easy, 14th reads like a term paper.

Five formulas, one verdict

Single-formula tools mislead. Median-of-five gives a readability score you can defend in a content review.

Works on live URLs

A reading level analyzer that reads published pages — check reading level of text you shipped last year, not just new drafts.

Actionable flags

Long-sentence and complex-word counts show where to cut. Shorten five sentences and re-run — watch the grade drop.

AI quotes simple text

Answer engines lift clear, quotable sentences. Plain-English pages get cited; dense ones get paraphrased away.

Meets readers where they are

Most audiences read comfortably at grade 8–9. Match that and conversion copy, docs and blogs all work harder.

What your readability score actually means

Every readability rating boils down to two measurable habits: sentence length and word complexity. Flesch Reading Ease runs 0–100 (higher is easier; 60–70 is plain English), while grade formulas like Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog and SMOG estimate the school grade needed to follow you comfortably. So when you ask “what grade level is my writing?”, the honest answer is a range — which is why this reading level analyzer shows all five formulas plus their median instead of one flattering number.

The practical workflow: check reading level of text before it ships, aim for grade 8–9 on marketing pages (10–12 is fine for technical docs), then cut the flagged long sentences and swap three-syllable words for short ones. Re-run the readability checker after each pass — dropping from grade 13 to grade 9 typically takes minutes and measurably lifts both human conversions and the odds AI engines quote you verbatim.

What users say about the readability checker

Regulators want grade 8 for patient-facing copy. This reading level checker gives me the number and the receipts in one screenshot.
Sarah J. · Content lead, healthtech
The URL mode is the sleeper feature — I audited 30 old docs pages in an afternoon without copy-pasting anything.
Miguel A. · Technical writer
Median-of-five is smart. Hemingway alone kept calling my copy harder than readers found it.
Nina P. · Email marketer
Rewrote our landing page from grade 13 to grade 9 using the long-sentence flags. Bounce rate dropped the same week.
James K. · Founder

Reading level checker FAQs

What grade level is my writing supposed to hit?+

For marketing and general audiences, grade 8–9 is the sweet spot; news writes to grade 9–11; technical docs can run 10–12. Above grade 13 you are asking readers to work — few will.

Which formulas does this readability checker use?+

Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade, Gunning Fog, SMOG and Coleman-Liau, plus ARI in the detail table. The headline grade is the median, so one formula cannot skew your readability score.

Can I check reading level of text on a live page?+

Yes — paste the URL and the reading level analyzer extracts the main content (skipping nav and footers) before scoring. Handy for auditing published pages at scale.

How do I lower my grade level fast?+

Split every flagged long sentence in two, swap complex words for one- or two-syllable ones, and lead with the point. Those three edits move a readability rating more than any style advice.

Does readability affect AI search visibility?+

Indirectly but really: answer engines prefer lifting clear, self-contained sentences. Simple text gets quoted; dense text gets summarized — with your nuance (and name) often lost. Run a free Kairosy scan to see how AI currently quotes you.

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