What is a good Flesch reading ease score?

A good Flesch reading ease score for everyday writing (web pages, emails, reports, instructions) is 60 to 70 or higher. Rudolf Flesch labeled 60 to 70 “Standard” and placed it at an 8th to 9th grade reading level, and Microsoft’s Word documentation says that “for most standard files, you want the score to be between 60 and 70.” Scores of 70 and up are easy, 50 to 60 is fairly difficult, and anything under 30 reads like a dense academic or legal text. To score your own text, paste it into the readability score checker. It shows the Flesch score, its band and five other readability formulas.

The Flesch reading ease scale

Flesch published the formula in 1948 in the Journal of Applied Psychology (“A new readability yardstick”). In The Art of Readable Writing (1949) he gave a table for interpreting it, which William DuBay reproduces in The Principles of Readability. The bands, labels and grade levels below are the ones our checker uses. The last two columns are Flesch’s own figures for a typical text in each band.

Score	Style	Reading level	Avg. words per sentence	Syllables per 100 words
90–100	Very easy	5th grade	8 or fewer	123 or fewer
80–90	Easy	6th grade	11	131
70–80	Fairly easy	7th grade	14	139
60–70	Standard	8th and 9th grade	17	147
50–60	Fairly difficult	10th to 12th grade	21	155
30–50	Difficult	College	25	167
0–30	Very difficult	College graduate	29 or more	192 or more

A score exactly on a boundary goes into the higher band: 60.0 is Standard and 59.9 is Fairly difficult. Our checker picks the band from the score as it shows it, rounded to one decimal, so a score of 59.96 shows as 60 and is Standard. The scale is open at both ends. Very short sentences of one-syllable words go past 100, and long sentences of long words go below 0. Our checker files anything above 100 under Very easy and anything below 0 under Very difficult.

How the formula works

The formula uses only two numbers taken from your text:

Score = 206.835 − 1.015 × (words ÷ sentences) − 84.6 × (syllables ÷ words)

This is the version printed in Microsoft’s help page and written into Florida’s insurance law. The checker on this site uses the same constants. Here is how it scores the sample paragraph in the tool:

Measure	Value
Words	64
Sentences	4
Syllables	98
Words per sentence	16.0
Syllables per word	1.53
Flesch reading ease	61.1 (Standard)

The constants show you how much each kind of edit matters:

• Each extra word per sentence costs 1.015 points. Cutting the average sentence from 25 words to 15 adds about 10 points.
• Each extra 0.1 syllables per word costs 8.46 points. Moving from 1.6 to 1.4 syllables per word adds about 17 points.

So word length moves the score more than sentence length does. Replacing “utilize” with “use” or “approximately” with “about” often helps more than splitting a sentence. Use the syllable counter to see which words carry the most syllables. Use the sentence counter to find the sentences that run longest.

What score should you aim for?

The right target depends on who reads the text and why:

Text	Sensible target	Why
Consumer web pages, help articles, emails, letters	60–70 or higher	Standard band; Microsoft’s suggested range for most documents
Instructions, forms, public information	70 or higher	Readers act on it, often under time pressure
Business reports, journalism for a broad audience	50–70	Some longer terms are unavoidable
Academic, legal or technical writing for specialists	30–50 is common	Precise terms are long; aim higher where you can

These targets are guidance, not rules, with one exception: a few laws set a minimum score. Florida’s statute on readable language in insurance policies (section 627.4145) treats a policy form as readable only if it scores at least 45 on the Flesch reading ease test. It also requires readable layout, headings and a table of contents for long policies. The state insurance office can allow a lower score in some cases. The statute also sets counting rules. Contractions, hyphenated words and numbers separated by spaces each count as one word. A unit of text ending in a period, semicolon or colon counts as one sentence, except headings. Forms over 10,000 words can be scored on two 200-word samples per page instead of the full text.

A rewrite, scored step by step

The three versions below say roughly the same thing. Each score comes from the checker on this site.

Version	Words per sentence	Syllables per word	Score	Band
Notwithstanding the aforementioned considerations, the organization anticipates implementing additional modifications to its subscription infrastructure during the forthcoming fiscal period.	19.0	3.00	−66.2	Very difficult
We plan to make more changes to our subscription system next year, even with the issues listed above.	18.0	1.44	66.4	Standard
We still plan to change how subscriptions work. The changes will start next year.	7.0	1.21	97.0	Very easy

The first rewrite barely shortens the sentence (19 words to 18), but it raises the score by about 133 points by swapping long words for short ones. The second rewrite splits the sentence and trims words. Whether 97 is better than 66 depends on the reader. The 66-point version keeps a detail that the shortest one drops.

Why tools give different Flesch scores

The formula is fixed, but counting words, sentences and syllables is not, and each tool makes its own choices:

• Syllables are estimated. Software can’t hear words, so it applies spelling rules plus a list of exceptions. Our counter works this way, and unusual words or names can be off by one. Because 0.1 syllables per word is worth 8.46 points, small counting differences add up. The guide to counting syllables explains the rules.
• Sentence breaks differ. Our checker ends a sentence at ., !, ? or … and ignores common abbreviations and decimals: “Dr. Smith paid $4.50 for it. It was e.g. cheap.” counts as two sentences. Florida’s rule also ends a sentence at a semicolon or colon, which raises the score of the same text.
• Headings and line breaks. Our checker ends a sentence at an empty line, and each list item (a line starting with -, *, • or a number such as 1.) counts as its own sentence. A single line break does not end a sentence, because text copied from PDFs breaks lines mid-sentence: “Getting started” followed on the next line by “Open the file.” counts as one sentence, but with an empty line between them it counts as two. Other tools treat headings and short list items differently, and every extra sentence lowers the words-per-sentence figure.
• Numbers and symbols. Our checker counts a number such as “2026” as one word of one syllable. Other tools may spell it out or skip it.

So compare scores from the same tool. A text that scores 62 in one checker and 58 in another hasn’t changed. For the other counts that go into the score, see text analysis basics.

Flesch reading ease vs Flesch–Kincaid grade level

In 1975 J. Peter Kincaid and colleagues recalculated the Flesch formula for the US Navy, using comprehension tests taken by 531 enlisted personnel. The result is the Flesch–Kincaid grade level. It uses the same two inputs but outputs a US school grade:

	Flesch reading ease	Flesch–Kincaid grade level
Formula	206.835 − 1.015 × ASL − 84.6 × ASW	0.39 × ASL + 11.8 × ASW − 15.59
Direction	Higher = easier	Lower = easier
Typical target	60–70	About 7 to 8 (Microsoft)
Sample paragraph above	61.1	8.7

ASL is the average sentence length in words and ASW is the average number of syllables per word. Because both formulas use the same inputs, a change that helps one helps the other. Word shows both in its readability statistics. In Word for Microsoft 365 on Windows they are under Home > Editor > Document stats. Our checker shows them alongside Gunning fog, SMOG, Coleman–Liau and ARI.

What the score cannot tell you

The Flesch score measures sentence length and word length, nothing else. It does not check whether the ideas are in a sensible order or the facts are right. It does not know whether your readers already know the subject. Shuffle the words of every sentence and the score stays the same. A text can also score 80 and still confuse people with jargon, because short words can be jargon too.

Use the score as a quick warning light. If a page aimed at the public comes in under 50, look for long sentences (the checker lists every sentence over 25 words) and long words you could replace. Then read the text aloud or show it to someone from the intended audience. If you’re also working on paragraph length, see how many words and sentences are in a paragraph.