FREE TOOL / NO ACCOUNT / RUNS ON THE PAGE YOU GIVE IT
Word counter and readability score
Words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, syllables and reading time, plus a real Flesch-Kincaid grade level. Everything runs in your browser, so nothing you paste is sent to us.
Readability
Write at least 10 words. Below that the formulas swing several grades on a single long word, so a number here would be noise.
Runs entirely in your browser. Your text is never sent to us, so there is nothing for us to store, log or leak.
QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS TOOL
- How is reading time calculated?
- Words divided by 200 words per minute. 200 wpm is a common figure for silent reading of general prose by adults. It is a rate, not a measurement of your readers: technical text with code or tables reads far slower, and a practised reader on familiar material reads faster.
- What is a Flesch-Kincaid grade level?
- The US school grade expected to read the text. It is 0.39 times the average words per sentence, plus 11.8 times the average syllables per word, minus 15.59. Only two things move it: how long your sentences are and how many syllables your words have. Shorter sentences and plainer words lower the grade.
- What score should I aim for?
- For general web content, grade 8 or below, which is roughly a Reading Ease of 60 or above. Anything above grade 12 is asking a reader to work. This is a guide, not a rule: an audience of specialists reading about their own specialism will happily read a higher grade.
- How are syllables counted?
- With a spelling heuristic, not a pronunciation dictionary. It counts vowel groups, then corrects the three cases that cause most of the error: a silent trailing e (make is one syllable), a silent -ed (walked is one, wanted is two), and an -es that is actually spoken (boxes is two, makes is one). It is accurate on ordinary prose and will miss on unusual names and loanwords. No counter without a dictionary does better, and any that claims exactness is overstating.
- How are sentences and paragraphs counted?
- A sentence ends at a full stop, exclamation mark or question mark followed by a space or the end of the text. A paragraph is any line with text on it. An abbreviation followed by a space, like e.g. in the middle of a line, will be counted as a sentence break, which pulls the grade level down slightly.
- Is my text sent anywhere?
- No. Every count on this page is computed by JavaScript in your own browser. There is no request to our servers when you type, so there is nothing for us to store or log. You can check by opening your browser network tab.
A TOOL CHECKS ONCE. SEOBUILDER KEEPS WATCH.
We can watch this for you.
A grade level tells you whether a page can be read. It cannot tell you whether the page is being found, or whether an AI answer names you when someone asks the question the page answers. We track both, on the pages you publish.