What is a good readability score?

A good readability score depends on who you are writing for. For most documents, Microsoft suggests a Flesch Reading Ease of 60 to 70 and a Flesch-Kincaid grade of about 7 to 8. Those are rules of thumb, and no law sets them. A score only means something when you compare it with the right audience target.

Last updated 8 October 2026

The short answer

If you have one minute, here it is.

• General readers: Microsoft suggests a Flesch Reading Ease of 60 to 70 and a Flesch-Kincaid grade of around 7.0 to 8.0 for most documents.
• Patient materials: the targets most often cited are 6th grade, attributed to the American Medical Association, and 8th grade, attributed to the National Institutes of Health. FDA guidance on consumer medication information suggests sixth to eighth grade.
• US government writing: the Plain Writing Act requires clear writing and sets no grade level.
• Specialist readers (legal, technical, academic): a higher grade can be fine when readers know the subject. This calculator's presets allow up to grade 11, 14 and 16.

The rest of this page explains where the targets come from and how to use them.

Target scores by audience

These are the audience presets in the calculator on the home page. They are this site's rules of thumb, not study results or legal limits. Pick a preset and each score row shows whether it is in target.

What's a good Flesch Reading Ease score?

Flesch Reading Ease is the 0-to-100 score (higher is easier) Rudolf Flesch published in 1948. Many writing tools report it. Flesch's own table, as reproduced in William DuBay's review of readability research:

For general web content, 60 to 70 is a common target. Flesch labelled that band "Standard." A score of 70 to 80 is easier still.

See the full Flesch Reading Ease reference page.

What's a good Flesch-Kincaid grade level?

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (Kincaid et al., 1975) returns a US school grade. Microsoft Word reports it. This calculator labels the grades like this:

Microsoft suggests a grade of around 7.0 to 8.0 for most documents. For patient materials, some sources attribute a 6th-grade target to the AMA and an 8th-grade target to the NIH. The Plain Writing Act sets no grade level.

See the full Flesch-Kincaid reference page.

Why the same score means different things

A grade-9 score can suit a blog post and be too hard for a patient consent form. Four things to keep in mind:

1. Many adults find reading hard. The OECD's Survey of Adult Skills found that about one in six US adults has weak literacy skills. The survey reports skill levels, not school grades.
2. What readers already know matters. A passage full of medical terms scores as harder on these formulas but may be easy for a nurse. The formulas count word and sentence length. They cannot tell which words your readers know.
3. Hard subjects are not the same as hard wording. The score reflects word and sentence length, not how hard the ideas are. A post about quantum computing can be written at grade 9 or at grade 14.
4. The reading situation matters. A patient reading discharge instructions may be stressed, unwell, or not reading in their first language. Plain wording helps most in those moments.

A good score on which formula?

This site scores six formulas. They give different numbers on the same passage, because each was built from a different sample of text and a different test of understanding:

• Flesch Reading Ease — 0–100, higher is easier.
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level — US grade. One of the two scores Microsoft Word shows.
• Gunning Fog Index — US grade. Uses sentence length and the share of words with three or more syllables.
• SMOG Index — US grade. A 2013 review found it best suited to health care. It is set to complete comprehension.
• Coleman-Liau Index — US grade. Counts letters instead of syllables.
• Automated Readability Index — US grade. Also counts characters. This calculator rounds it up.

For most writers, the simplest workflow is to look at all six. The home calculator computes them together and reports a consensus grade, an average across the six.

How to hit a good score on your draft

Three edits that lower most scores:

1. Split sentences over 25 words. Find the conjunction ("and", "where", "which", "because") and split there.
2. Prefer short verbs. "Use" over "utilise". "Show" over "demonstrate". "Help" over "facilitate". Each swap saves two or three syllables. On a 200-word passage, five swaps lower the Flesch-Kincaid grade by about half a point.
3. Replace nominalisations with verbs. "Made the decision to" becomes "decided to". "Perform an analysis of" becomes "analyse". Each change saves words and syllables.

For the long version, see the eight tactical edits guide.

What "good score" doesn't mean

A "good" readability score is not the same as good writing. Three things readability formulas do not measure:

• Whether the content is true. Misinformation reads at the same grade level as accurate information.
• Whether the structure makes sense. A passage can score perfectly while being incoherent at the paragraph or section level.
• Whether the audience will care. A grade-7 sales letter your audience finds patronising is worse than a grade-10 letter that respects them.

The right way to use readability scores is as a constraint to satisfy, not an objective to maximise. Get the score in the right band for the audience, then every other writing-quality dimension matters more.

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