What is a good readability score?
Readability formulas boil your writing down to two numbers: how long your sentences are and how long your words are. Here's what the scores mean, what to aim for, and — more usefully — what to do when yours is too low.
How the Flesch scores work
Flesch Reading Ease scores text from roughly 0 to 100 — higher is easier. It rewards short sentences and short words, and nothing else: 206.835 − 1.015 × (words per sentence) − 84.6 × (syllables per word). Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level repackages the same two inputs as a US school grade, so "grade 8" means an average eighth-grader could follow it on first reading. Because both formulas only see sentence length and word length, they are a proxy for clarity, not a measurement of it — a short, confusing sentence scores beautifully. Treat the score as a smoke alarm: a bad score almost always means hard reading, but a good score doesn't make the writing good.
Two different kinds of score get mixed up: Flesch READING EASE is a 0–100-ish scale where higher = easier; GRADE-LEVEL formulas (Flesch–Kincaid, and the same idea behind Gunning Fog or SMOG) invert that into «years of schooling», where higher = harder. A 60 Reading Ease and a grade 9 describe roughly the same text — don't compare a Reading Ease number against a grade target.
What to aim for, by audience
Most professional writing for a general audience lands well at 60–70 Reading Ease (grade 8–9): newspapers, marketing pages, help docs. Popular fiction and mass-market email often run 70–90. Specialist writing legitimately scores lower — legal contracts, medical papers and academic prose typically fall below 40, and forcing them to 70 would strip necessary precision. The honest rule: write at the lowest grade that preserves your meaning. Nobody has ever complained that a text was too easy to understand, but readers abandon pages that make them work for no reason.
How to raise a low score (without dumbing it down)
The formula gives you exactly two levers. First, sentence length: split anything over ~25 words, cut throat-clearing openers ("It is important to note that…"), and turn comma chains into separate sentences. Second, word length: prefer "use" to "utilize", "help" to "facilitate", "end" to "terminate" — the short word is almost always the stronger one anyway. Beyond the formula's sight: front-load the point of each paragraph, use concrete examples, and read it aloud — anywhere you stumble, your reader will too.
One honest limit: these formulas are calibrated on English
Both Flesch formulas were built and validated on English text — the syllable weights and the US-grade mapping don't transfer to other languages (Spanish and German average more syllables per word without being harder; several languages have their own formulas, like LIX for Scandinavian text, which our readability checker also shows where appropriate). And a readability score measures the TARGET AUDIENCE a text fits, not its quality: a 30 can be excellent legal drafting, a 90 can be a bad novel. Aim the score at your readers, then judge the writing as writing.
A worked pair — same meaning, two scores (from the real checker)
«Our team completed the annual review this week. The results show steady progress across every region.» — 16 words in 2 sentences, 27 syllables: Reading Ease 56.
«The annual review that our team conducted this quarter demonstrated continuing improvement across all company divisions and regions.» — the same information as ONE 18-word sentence with longer words (37 syllables): Reading Ease 15.
Nothing about the facts changed — only sentence length and word length, the formula's two levers. These numbers are produced by the same engine as the readability checker, so you can paste either sentence there and see the identical score.
Flesch Reading Ease bands
| 90–100 | Very easy — 5th grade; simple fiction, children's writing |
| 80–90 | Easy — 6th grade; conversational email, mass-market copy |
| 70–80 | Fairly easy — 7th grade; most popular fiction |
| 60–70 | Plain English — 8th–9th grade; news, marketing, help docs |
| 50–60 | Fairly difficult — high school; trade publications |
| 30–50 | Difficult — college; academic and technical writing |
| 0–30 | Very difficult — graduate; legal, scientific papers |
What does MY score mean? — enter the number, private
Type the score your readability checker run gave you — just the number, no text. Bands describe the audience a text fits, never its quality.
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For a GRADE-level score (Flesch–Kincaid), remember: higher grade = harder, roughly grade ≈ (100 − ease) ÷ 10 + 3 in the middle of the scale.
Formulas: Flesch (1948) Reading Ease and Kincaid et al. (1975) grade level — the same constants the live checker uses; band table is Flesch's published convention, describing target audiences, not quality. Both formulas are English-calibrated (stated above). Worked pair computed by the live engine. Verified 2026-07-23.
Is a readability score of 60 good?
For a general audience, yes — 60–70 Reading Ease is the plain-English band that most news and marketing writing targets. For specialist readers a lower score can be perfectly appropriate.
What grade level should I write for?
Grade 8–9 is the usual target for the general public. Write at the lowest grade level that preserves your meaning — easy reading never costs you expert readers, but hard reading costs you everyone else.
Do search engines rank easier text higher?
Not directly — Google has said readability scores are not a ranking factor. Indirectly it can matter: clearer pages tend to hold readers longer and earn more links, and those signals do matter.