Flesch Kincaid Calculator

This Flesch Kincaid Calculator can be used to show how readable your text is by providing a Flesch Readability Ease score and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score.

Instructions: Cut-and-paste the text you want to test into the box below, then click "Calculate"; this will give you the text's readability scores.

Flesch Reading Ease Score

The Flesch Reading Ease Score was first used in 1948 to show how readable a text is. The score lets you know the approximate educational level a person will need to be able to read a particular text easily.

How comprehensible a document is will be indicated on the Flesch Reading Ease Score by a number between 0 and 100. Scores around 100 mean the document is extremely easy to read, while scores around 0 mean that it is highly complex and difficult to understand. Conversion tables can be used to translate the score into educational levels, e.g., if the score is around 70 to 80 that equates to the text being appropriate for around school grade level 7, i.e., the average adult should find it reasonably simple to read.

The Flesch Reading Ease score is arrived at by using this equation:

Flesch Reading Ease Score = 206.835 − 1.015 × ( Total Words / Total Sentences ) − 84.6 × ( Total Syllables / Total Words )

These scores are used by policy writers, research communicators, and digital marketers in order to find how easily a target audience will be able to understand and engage with a particular text.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level

The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level shows what educational level a person will need in order to understand a particular text.

The scores created by the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level match up to the US grade levels of education readers will need to be able to comprehend a particular text, e.g., if the text has a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 9, to be able to understand the document easily the reader would have had to have undergone around nine years of education (i.e., reached around 9th grade).

The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is assessed by examining how many words, sentences, and syllables a document contains, employing the equation below:

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level = 0.39 × ( Total Words / Total Sentences ) + 11.8 × ( Total Syllables / Total Words ) − 15.59