What is a good readability score?

A good readability score depends on who you are writing for. For most general-audience writing, target a Flesch Reading Ease of 60 to 70 and a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 7 to 9. For marketing copy, aim higher. For plain-language compliance, aim lower. The score in isolation is meaningless; the score against the right audience target is what matters.

The short answer

If you have one minute, here it is.

• General-audience web writing: Flesch Reading Ease 60 to 70, Flesch-Kincaid grade 7 to 9.
• Marketing copy, landing pages, email: Flesch Reading Ease 70 to 80, FK grade 6 to 7.
• Plain-language compliance (government, patient information): Flesch Reading Ease 70 or higher, FK grade 6 to 8.
• Business writing, white papers: Flesch Reading Ease 50 to 60, FK grade 10 to 12.
• Academic, legal, scientific: Flesch Reading Ease 30 to 50, FK grade 13 to 16.

The rest of this page explains why each band exists and how to use the targets without missing the point.

Target scores by audience

The targets are guidance, not law. Each band reflects what the available evidence shows the relevant audience can comfortably read. The calculator on the home page accepts an audience preset and shows a ✓ or ⚠ on every score row against that target as you edit.

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. It is what Yoast SEO uses to grade WordPress content. The standard interpretation:

For SEO content specifically, Yoast suggests 60 or above. The 60 to 70 band is the working target most professional writers anchor to; pushing to 70 to 80 buys speed-of-comprehension at the marginal cost of perceived seriousness.

See the full Flesch Reading Ease reference page.

What's a good Flesch-Kincaid grade level?

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (Kincaid, 1975) returns a US school grade. It is the readability formula Microsoft Word reports. The standard interpretation:

The most cited single target: grade 8 or below for general-audience writing. PlainLanguage.gov recommends this; the AMA recommends grade 6 for patient material; most marketing teams default to 7 to 8.

See the full Flesch-Kincaid reference page.

Why the same score means different things

A grade-9 readability score is excellent on a blog post and inadequate on a patient consent form. The same number applied to different audiences answers different questions. Four contexts where the "good score" depends entirely on context:

1. Average US adult reads at roughly grade 8, per the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. About 36 million US adults read below grade 6. Public-facing writing at grade 12 excludes a meaningful portion of the population by design, not by accident.
2. Reader prior knowledge matters more than the formula. A passage full of medical terms scores worse on every readability formula but is perfectly readable to a nurse. The score predicts decoding difficulty for an average reader; it cannot account for vocabulary the audience already knows.
3. Subject difficulty is independent of reading level. A blog post about quantum computing written at FK grade 9 is more useful than the same content at FK grade 14. The score measures how hard the words are to decode, not how hard the ideas are.
4. Reader context affects target. A patient at a hospital reading discharge instructions is stressed, often unwell, often not in their first language. The grade-6 AMA target reflects that stress floor, not the patient's literacy ceiling.

A good score on which formula?

There are six readability formulas in common use. They report slightly different numbers on the same passage because they were calibrated for different audiences and definitions of "comprehension":

• Flesch Reading Ease — 0–100, higher is easier. The Yoast / WordPress default.
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level — US grade. Microsoft Word's default.
• Gunning Fog Index — years of education. Penalises jargon more aggressively; best for policy and business writing.
• SMOG Index — US grade. The AMA standard for healthcare; predicts 100% comprehension rather than the 50-75% threshold most formulas use.
• Coleman-Liau Index — US grade. Character-based instead of syllable-based; more reliable for technical writing.
• Automated Readability Index — US grade. Coleman-Liau's sibling; also character-based.

For most writers, the simplest workflow is to look at the consensus across all six. The home calculator computes all six in parallel and reports a consensus grade — outliers tell you what's wrong. A SMOG spike with normal Flesch-Kincaid means vocabulary is the problem. A Gunning Fog spike means jargon. The pattern is the signal.

How to hit a good score on your draft

Three high-leverage edits move every readability formula faster than any others:

1. Cut sentences over 25 words. Almost every sentence over 25 words is two sentences pretending to be one. Find the conjunction ("and", "where", "which", "because") and split there.
2. Prefer one-syllable verbs. "Use" over "utilise". "Show" over "demonstrate". "Help" over "facilitate". Each substitution typically saves two syllables and one word; on a 200-word passage, five swaps drop the grade by one full point.
3. Replace nominalisations with verbs. "Made the decision to" becomes "decided to". "Perform an analysis of" becomes "analyse". Each transformation saves words and syllables without losing meaning.

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 explicitly 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.

Frequently asked questions