What is a good Flesch reading ease score?

It depends on who is reading. Flesch described scores of 60 to 70 as "standard", 90 to 100 as "very easy" and 0 to 30 as "very difficult". A higher score means shorter sentences and shorter words, not better writing: a legal contract and a children's book are written for different readers, and the score only tells you which way a draft has moved.

What does the Flesch-Kincaid grade level mean?

It is the same two measurements, sentence length and word length, re-weighted to predict a US school grade. Kincaid and colleagues fitted it in 1975 to comprehension tests taken by Navy enlisted personnel reading Navy training material. A score of 8 means text pitched at a US eighth-grade reading level.

Why does this only work for English?

Both formulas were fitted on English text, and the page counts syllables with rules for English spelling. Other languages have their own readability formulas with different weights, and applying these to them gives numbers with no meaning.

Why is my syllable count different from a dictionary's?

The page estimates syllables from spelling rather than looking each word up. English spelling is irregular, so the rules miss some words: "create" and "idea" come out a syllable short, "business" a syllable long. Checked against the Carnegie Mellon Pronouncing Dictionary, the estimate is right for about nine words in ten.

How are sentences counted?

A sentence ends at a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark followed by a capital letter, a figure, a quotation mark or the end of the text, and at a blank line, so a heading counts as a sentence. An abbreviation followed by a lower-case word, like "e.g. the", does not end one, but a title followed by a name, like "Dr. Smith", does. Colons and semicolons do not end sentences here, though Flesch counted some of them.

Can the score go above 100 or below 0?

Yes. The formulas have no floor or ceiling. Very short sentences of one-syllable words score above 100, and the grade level can go below zero; long legal or technical sentences can score below zero. The page shows the number the formula gives.

Readability Calculator

The Flesch reading ease and Flesch-Kincaid grade level of a passage of English, with the words, sentences and syllables they are counted from.

Built by AbhiLast reviewed September 26, 2026

Result

Flesch reading ease: 68.5Estimate

Higher is easier. Most text scores between 0 and 100.

Syllables and sentences are counted by rules for English spelling and punctuation, so the scores are estimates, and only for English text.

Flesch-Kincaid grade level: 8.3Estimate; A US school grade: 8 means a reader in eighth grade.
Words: 56
Sentences: 3
Syllables (estimated): 79
Words per sentence: 18.67
Syllables per word: 1.41Estimate

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Academic results are arithmetic estimates based on the values you enter. Your syllabus, school policies, transcript and official degree audit control actual grades and progress. Confirm important figures with your instructor, adviser or registrar. Read the full disclaimer

How to use the Readability Calculator

Paste or type a passage of English, up to 5,000 characters. A hundred words or more gives a steadier score.
Read the Flesch reading ease score and the Flesch-Kincaid grade level.
Check the word, sentence and syllable counts the scores come from, and edit the text to see how shorter sentences or shorter words move them.

The formulas

reading ease  = 206.835 − 1.015 × words per sentence − 84.6 × syllables per wordgrade level   = 0.39 × words per sentence + 11.8 × syllables per word − 15.59

Rudolf Flesch published the reading ease formula in 1948; his book The Art of Readable Writing gives it with the syllable term per 100 words, 0.846 × syllables per 100 words, which is the same thing. J. Peter Kincaid and colleagues re-derived the weights as a grade level for the US Navy in 1975. Both scores rest on the same two averages, so they move together: a higher reading ease goes with a lower grade.

Flesch’s scale

Flesch described the reading ease scale in bands. These are his descriptions and the school grades he gave them in The Art of Readable Writing, not a judgement of any text:

90 to 100, very easy: 5th grade
80 to 90, easy: 6th grade
70 to 80, fairly easy: 7th grade
60 to 70, standard: 8th and 9th grade
50 to 60, fairly difficult: 10th to 12th grade
30 to 50, difficult: 13th to 16th grade
0 to 30, very difficult: college graduate

How the counting works

A word is anything between spaces or dashes that contains a letter, so a hyphenated word or a contraction counts once, as Flesch counted them. Numbers written in digits are left out of all the counts, as Flesch suggested for passages with many figures, and the page shows how many it left out. Syllables are estimated from the spelling of each word by rules for English: vowel groups, a silent final e, endings like -ed and -es that usually add no syllable, and a few suffixes. These are heuristics, so the scores are estimates, and they are for English only.

What the score does not measure

Readability formulas count, they do not read. A passage of short common words can still be muddled, and a precise technical term can be the clearest word available. Use the score to compare drafts of the same text, not to decide whether writing is good.

With your numbers

Words per sentence = 56 ÷ 3 = 18.67
Syllables per word = 79 ÷ 56 = 1.411
Reading ease = 206.835 − 1.015 × 18.67 − 84.6 × 1.411 = 68.5
Grade level = 0.39 × 18.67 + 11.8 × 1.411 − 15.59 = 8.3

Quick reference

Syllables and sentences are counted by rules for English spelling and punctuation, so the scores are estimates, and only for English text.

Common academic examples, worked out with this calculator's starting options.
Example	Flesch reading ease
The example passage	68.5
One short sentence	116.1
Short sentences, short words	101.4
Long sentences, long words	30.9
Questions and exclamations	109.6
A figure, an abbreviation, no final stop	103.7

Where the numbers come from

The fixed figures this calculator relies on, and the published source each one was checked against. How the calculators are built and checked

4 sources

Flesch, R. The Art of Readable Writing (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), Appendix, How to use the readability formula, Step 7, pp. 215-216: "Subtract this sum from 206.835"; read from the Digital Library of India scan, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.275839. The formula is the one of Flesch, R., A new readability yardstick, Journal of Applied Psychology 32(3):221-233 (1948), doi:10.1037/h0057532, which could not be opened (paywalled).
Used for
- The constant of the Flesch reading ease formula, from which the sentence-length and word-length terms are subtracted.
Flesch, R. The Art of Readable Writing (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), Appendix, How to use the readability formula, Step 7, pp. 215-216: "Multiply the average sentence length by 1.015"; read from the Digital Library of India scan, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.275839. The formula is the one of Flesch, R., A new readability yardstick, Journal of Applied Psychology 32(3):221-233 (1948), doi:10.1037/h0057532, which could not be opened (paywalled).
Used for
- Flesch reading ease: points taken off for each word of average sentence length.
Flesch, R. The Art of Readable Writing (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), Appendix, How to use the readability formula, Step 7, pp. 215-216: "Multiply the number of syllables per 100 words by .846"; read from the Digital Library of India scan, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.275839. The formula is the one of Flesch, R., A new readability yardstick, Journal of Applied Psychology 32(3):221-233 (1948), doi:10.1037/h0057532, which could not be opened (paywalled). Kincaid et al. (1975), Table 3, prints the old formula as ".836 (syllables/100 words)" in the copy read, which disagrees with Flesch; Flesch's own .846 is used.
Used for
- Flesch reading ease: points taken off for each syllable per word. Flesch prints 0.846 per syllable per 100 words, which is 84.6 per syllable per word.
Kincaid, J. P.; Fishburne, R. P. Jr.; Rogers, R. L.; Chissom, B. S. Derivation of New Readability Formulas (Automated Readability Index, Fog Count and Flesch Reading Ease Formula) for Navy Enlisted Personnel, Research Branch Report 8-75, Chief of Naval Technical Training, Naval Air Station Memphis, February 1975, Table 3, p. 14: "New: GL = .39 (words/sentence) + 11.8 (syllables/word) - 15.59", https://stars.library.ucf.edu/istlibrary/56/ (read from the Internet Archive copy of the PDF; the live file sits behind a bot challenge).
Used for
- Flesch-Kincaid grade level: grade levels added for each word of average sentence length.
- Flesch-Kincaid grade level: grade levels added for each syllable per word.
- Flesch-Kincaid grade level: the constant subtracted from the two weighted terms.

Common questions about the Readability Calculator

What is a good Flesch reading ease score?: It depends on who is reading. Flesch described scores of 60 to 70 as "standard", 90 to 100 as "very easy" and 0 to 30 as "very difficult". A higher score means shorter sentences and shorter words, not better writing: a legal contract and a children's book are written for different readers, and the score only tells you which way a draft has moved.
What does the Flesch-Kincaid grade level mean?: It is the same two measurements, sentence length and word length, re-weighted to predict a US school grade. Kincaid and colleagues fitted it in 1975 to comprehension tests taken by Navy enlisted personnel reading Navy training material. A score of 8 means text pitched at a US eighth-grade reading level.
Why does this only work for English?: Both formulas were fitted on English text, and the page counts syllables with rules for English spelling. Other languages have their own readability formulas with different weights, and applying these to them gives numbers with no meaning.
Why is my syllable count different from a dictionary's?: The page estimates syllables from spelling rather than looking each word up. English spelling is irregular, so the rules miss some words: "create" and "idea" come out a syllable short, "business" a syllable long. Checked against the Carnegie Mellon Pronouncing Dictionary, the estimate is right for about nine words in ten.
How are sentences counted?: A sentence ends at a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark followed by a capital letter, a figure, a quotation mark or the end of the text, and at a blank line, so a heading counts as a sentence. An abbreviation followed by a lower-case word, like "e.g. the", does not end one, but a title followed by a name, like "Dr. Smith", does. Colons and semicolons do not end sentences here, though Flesch counted some of them.
Can the score go above 100 or below 0?: Yes. The formulas have no floor or ceiling. Very short sentences of one-syllable words score above 100, and the grade level can go below zero; long legal or technical sentences can score below zero. The page shows the number the formula gives.