Word Count & Readability Scorer
Word count, reading time, Flesch and Gunning Fog scores, keyword density and sentence rhythm — measured on your text as you write it.
0 words · 0 characters · 0 sentences
Paste some text above, or fetch a URL. Everything is measured in your browser as you type — nothing you paste is sent anywhere.
How to use it
- Paste your draft into the box. Every metric updates as you type — there is nothing to submit.
- Already published? Switch to Fetch from URL and the page is read server-side, stripped of navigation, sidebars and footers, and dropped into the editor as plain body copy.
- Read the sentence length chart before the scores. It shows you which sentences to cut, where an average of 18 words only tells you the cutting worked.
- Use the keyword tables as an editing pass, not a target. They are there to show you what the page repeats, which is rarely what you thought it repeated.
Writing for readers, not for a word count
- Google has no minimum word count and has said so repeatedly. What correlates with ranking is coverage: pages that answer the whole question tend to be longer, not pages that pad to hit a number.
- Sentence length is the fastest lever on every readability score here. Splitting one 40-word sentence in two moves Flesch, Flesch-Kincaid and Gunning Fog at once, because all three are built on average sentence length.
- Aim for a Flesch Reading Ease of 60–70. That is roughly a 13-year-old's reading level, and it is where most well-edited web writing lands — including technical writing, which does not have to read like a specification.
- Vary the rhythm. The sentence length chart is more useful than the average: a page where every bar sits in one bucket reads as monotonous even when the average is perfect.
- Keyword density is not a ranking factor and has not been one for a long time. Treat anything over 2.5% as a writing smell rather than a penalty — it usually means the same phrase is doing work a pronoun should be doing.
- Break paragraphs at two or three sentences. A wall of text loses mobile readers long before the readability score would predict it.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good readability score for SEO?
A Flesch Reading Ease of 60–70, which corresponds to a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of about 8 or 9. That is the range most newspapers and well-edited web writing sit in. Readability is not a ranking factor — Google does not score your prose — but it drives whether people finish the page, and engagement is something search engines can measure. Technical subjects legitimately score lower because their vocabulary is longer; the fix is shorter sentences, not simpler ideas.
How many words should a blog post be for SEO?
There is no target, and Google has stated plainly that word count is not a ranking factor. What the data shows is correlation, not instruction: pages ranking for competitive commercial terms commonly run 1,500 words or more, because covering a broad topic properly takes that long. A 400-word page that answers one specific question completely will outrank a padded 2,000-word one. Write until the question is answered, then stop — and use the length scale here to check you have not stopped short of what the topic needs.
What is keyword density and does it matter?
Keyword density is how often a term appears as a percentage of total words. It mattered in the late 1990s, when search engines counted terms directly, and it has not been a ranking factor for well over a decade — modern retrieval works on embeddings and entities, not repetition. It is still worth looking at as an editing signal. A term above about 2.5% usually reads badly out loud, and unusually low density for your main topic can mean the page never actually says what it is about.
How is Flesch Reading Ease calculated?
The formula is 206.835 − (1.015 × average sentence length) − (84.6 × average syllables per word), scored from 0 to 100 where higher is easier. Only two things move it: how long your sentences are and how long your words are. That is also its limitation — it cannot tell whether the writing makes sense, only whether it is dense. Syllable counts here come from a heuristic rather than a pronunciation dictionary, so expect a point or two of drift against other tools.
Does this tool send my text anywhere?
No. In paste mode every count, score and table is computed in your browser — the text never leaves the tab, which is why the numbers update as you type. URL mode is the exception: the address you enter is sent to this site's server, which fetches the page, strips the navigation and footer, and returns the body copy. The extracted text is analysed in your browser like anything else, and nothing is stored.