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///ARTICFLY SYSTEM UTILITY

Readability Checker

Score any article on Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade, Pisarek for Polish, plus sentence length, passive voice, and adverb density. Paste a URL or raw text.

///WHY READABILITY

Why readability quietly decides whether your article gets read at all

Most blogs are written above the reading level of their target audience. A B2B article that should sit at grade 9 lands at grade 14, the reader bounces in 12 seconds. Time on page collapses, bounce rate spikes, Google sees a quality signal, the ranking drops. Readability is an indirect ranking factor with strong correlation to actual rankings.

This Readability Checker runs Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Pisarek index for Polish content, plus sentence length, passive voice, adverb density, and complex word ratio. Paste a URL or raw text, get the full report back in seconds. No signup, no card, no API key.

Use it before publishing to catch unreadable passages. Use it on your top-ranking competitors to see what level your niche actually reads at. Use it on your own drafts to ship content that compounds, not content that lands and dies.

///METRICS

Every readability metric your editor checks for you

Flesch Reading Ease (English)
0-100 scale. 60-70 is "plain English", what most blogs should aim for. Below 50 is hard to read, above 80 is grade-school simple.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
Estimates the US school grade required to comprehend the text. Most consumer blogs target grade 8-10. Technical blogs cap at grade 12-14.
Pisarek index (Polish)
Native readability metric for Polish content. The English Flesch formula gives misleading numbers for Polish, the Pisarek index handles Polish syllable rules correctly.
Sentence length analysis
Average sentence length and longest-sentence flag. Sentences over 30 words drop comprehension by 10-15% per extra 10 words.
Passive voice ratio
Percentage of sentences in passive voice. Most readability guides recommend keeping passive voice under 10%, hard reads usually run 25-40% passive.
Adverb density
Adverbs ending in "-ly" weaken writing and slow reading. The checker flags articles with adverb density above 4% so you can cut.
Complex word ratio
Percentage of 3+ syllable words. Inversely correlates with readability, technical articles tolerate higher ratios, consumer blogs need to keep this low.
Paragraph length
Long paragraphs (over 4 sentences) bury the point. The checker flags paragraphs that should be split for skim-ability.
///FIX ORDER

How to lift a readability score by 20 points in 30 minutes

  1. Cut sentences over 30 words. Find them, split each one in two. Single biggest lift to readability, usually 8-12 points on Flesch.
  2. Kill passive voice. Rewrite "X was done by Y" as "Y did X". 5-8 points on Flesch for a typical article.
  3. Cut adverbs ending in -ly. "Very", "really", "literally", "actually". Almost always deletable. 2-3 points of lift.
  4. Split paragraphs longer than 4 sentences. Long paragraphs do not change the Flesch score but tank skim-ability and time-on-page metrics that affect ranking.
  5. Swap complex words for simple ones. "Utilize" becomes "use", "facilitate" becomes "help". Each swap shaves the complex-word ratio.

Want to check readability alongside SEO and AEO signals? Run Article Audit, you get all 33 signals in one pass. Want articles that ship readable from day one? Article Writer targets grade 8-10 for consumer content and grade 10-12 for technical content out of the box.

///FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Is this really free with no signup?

Yes. Paste any article URL or raw text, get a full readability report back in seconds. No signup, no card, no API key. Rate-limited by IP to keep the tool free for everyone.

How is this different from Hemingway Editor?

Hemingway Editor is the gold-standard desktop app for sentence-level editing, paid one-time license, works offline. This checker runs the same core metrics (Flesch, sentence length, passive voice, adverbs) plus Pisarek for Polish content, in a browser, free, no install. Use Hemingway for active editing, this for quick audits or non-English content.

What readability score should I aim for?

For consumer blogs and B2C content: Flesch Reading Ease 60-70 (grade 8-10). For B2B and technical content: 50-60 (grade 10-12). For academic or specialist writing: 40-50 is acceptable. Below 30 means even experts struggle, almost always means cutting passive voice and shorter sentences will fix it.

Does readability affect SEO rankings?

Not directly, Google does not score readability in the algorithm. But it affects every metric Google does measure: time on page, bounce rate, scroll depth, social shares. An unreadable article performs poorly on all of those signals, which Google interprets as a quality issue. Readability is an indirect ranking factor with strong correlation to actual ranking.

Why does the tool support Polish specifically?

Polish syllable rules differ from English enough that the Flesch formula gives misleading scores, a perfectly readable Polish article often scores 30-40 on Flesch when its true difficulty is grade-8 level. The Pisarek index was designed for Polish text and handles Polish syllabification, case endings, and word patterns correctly.

Do AI engines prefer readable content?

Yes. Plain language is easier to parse, easier to chunk, easier to cite. AI engines preferentially cite content scoring above Flesch 60 (or equivalent in other languages) because that content maps cleanly into their answer format. Highly technical writing gets cited at 30-50% lower rates than plain-English equivalents.

Can I check non-public content (drafts, internal docs)?

Yes. The tool accepts raw pasted text, not just URLs. Paste any draft, internal doc, or unpublished article and you get the same full report. Nothing is stored, the text is analyzed and discarded.

How accurate are the scores?

The Flesch formula and Pisarek index are deterministic algorithms, same input, same score every time. The reading-level estimates are derived from large-corpus calibration and match within ±1 grade level of human assessments in independent studies. Adverb and passive-voice detection runs on standard NLP libraries, accuracy is ~95% for well-formed prose.

///READY?

Write content readers actually finish.

Run a free readability check above. Then let Articfly ship articles tuned for your audience's reading level, every time.

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