Free tool
Content Readability Checker
Paste an article, email, or any piece of writing and this tool scores its readability -- Flesch Reading Ease, grade level, sentence length, passive voice, and word complexity -- so you can see exactly what's slowing readers down.
Why readability matters
Dense, hard-to-follow writing loses readers before they reach the point -- and it costs more than engagement. Search engines increasingly favor content that's clear and well-structured, and a reader who bounces off a confusing paragraph never gets far enough to convert, subscribe, or share.
How this tool scores your text
This tool runs your text through the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level formulas -- the same math behind the readability checks built into Microsoft Word and most SEO plugins -- then goes further with sentence-length, passive-voice, and word-complexity breakdowns, so you know exactly which sentences to revise rather than just an abstract score.
What to do with a low score
Shorter sentences, plainer words, and active voice ('we shipped it' instead of 'it was shipped') do more for readability than almost anything else. Fixing the specific sentences this tool flags -- rather than rewriting everything -- is usually enough to move a score meaningfully.
Readability and real collaboration
Clear writing is part of what makes a site worth partnering with -- it signals a publication that respects its readers' time. PressCircle verifies every member's domain before their profile goes live, so the connections you make here start from sites that are already putting in the work.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Flesch Reading Ease score?
A widely used formula (from 1948, still the industry standard) that scores text from roughly 0 to 100 based on sentence length and word complexity. Higher means easier to read -- 60+ is considered accessible to a general adult audience.
What's the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level?
A related formula that translates the same inputs into a US school grade -- a score of 8 means a reader who finished 8th grade should follow the text comfortably. Most web writing aims for grade 7-9, even for expert audiences, because it's simply faster to read.
How is passive voice detected?
This tool looks for a form of "to be" (is, was, were, etc.) followed closely by a past-participle verb -- the shape of a passive construction like "the report was written." It's a heuristic, not a grammar parser, so it can occasionally miss a case or flag a false positive.
Is this free, and does it store what I paste?
Yes, free with no signup, and no -- the text you paste is analyzed in memory to produce your report and isn't saved anywhere.