Readability Checker

The Readability Checker is a free tool that measures how much of a page's HTML is actual visible text, counts its words and sentences, and scores how easy the content is to read using the Flesch-Kincaid formula — the same measure used across publishing, education, and SEO to judge how accessible a piece of writing really is.

Thin content, bloated markup, and dense, hard-to-read writing are three separate problems that all quietly hurt how a page performs — with visitors and with search engines trying to judge what a page is actually worth showing. This checker surfaces all three signals from a single scan, using data extracted from the page's own HTML.

When you submit a URL, the tool fetches the page's raw HTML and strips out scripts, styles, comments, and tags to isolate the visible text. The text-to-HTML ratio compares the length of that visible text against the length of the full HTML document.

The same extracted text is then used to count words and sentences and estimate syllables per word, which feed directly into the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level formulas — standard readability measures based on average sentence length and word complexity.

• A low text-to-HTML ratio isn't always thin content — sometimes it's just heavy markup, inline scripts, or styles. Check the raw page source before assuming the content itself is the problem.
• Aim for genuinely useful length, not an arbitrary word count. A focused 400-word answer beats a padded 1,200-word page that says the same thing with more filler.
• Break up long sentences and swap complex words for simpler ones where it doesn't cost you precision — both moves raise a Flesch Reading Ease score without dumbing down the content.
• Match readability to your actual audience. A score around 60-70 suits most general-audience content, but technical or academic material can reasonably score lower without being a real problem.