Don’t let its 1990s-esque design deter you, ReadabilityFormulas.com is an excellent resource for learning more about the individual formulas behind calculating readability as well as getting help and tips on improving your writing.
In addition to giving you access to a free readability checker, ReadabilityFormulas.com also helps you conduct reading assessments and assigns a general grade level to your text so that you can ensure it is written to reach and be understood by your target audience.
Known as the Automatic Readability Checker, this free online service takes a sample of your writing and checks it against seven different readability formulas. It then lets you know both the reading level and grade level needed to fully understand the text.
It’s worth noting that ReadabilityFormulas has two different text tools: their free text readability consensus calculator and a separate readability tool to calculate grade levels using formulas like the new Dale-Chall formula, Spache formula, Fry graph and others.
Keep in mind that with this readability checker, text sizes are limited to 3,000 words.
The reading level calculator scores your results against seven of the most popular readability formulas, including:
You’ll also get a resulting “Readability Consensus” that gives you an approximate grade level, reading level and reading age for your material.
You can also get some interesting word statistics if you’d like, including things like the number of syllables per word and syllabic breakdown of the text, one of the indicators of difficult readability according to some of the aforementioned formulas.
You’ll want to consider using this Reading Level Checker if you need a quick, accurate way to check your document’s readability according to several well-known readability formulas. If you don’t need all of the extra features of other readability checkers, like highlighting and grammar suggestions or writing improvement tips, this simple, streamlined readability checker is a great alternative.
It may not have all of the bells and whistles of its competitors, but at the same time, you can’t beat free.
Score Your Text Against 7 Popular Readability Tools - Check your writing using seven of the most popular readability tools online, including Gunning Fog, SMOG, Flesch-Kincaid and more.
Optional Readability Calculators Designed for Specific Grade Levels - After checking your text with the automated readability checker, you can narrow down your options by cursing calculators designed for specific grade levels to get an even more accurate picture of readability – a must for teachers, educational technologists, educational coordinators and others involved in educating students at various grade levels.
See the Precise Mathematical Formulas Involved in Calculating Readability - For those of you who like to see the numbers behind the calculators, ReadabilityFormulas is extremely helpful, in that not only does it calculate your readability but it also provides you with the mathematical formula used to discern that result.
ReadabilityFormulas doesn’t use its own algorithms, rather it plugs into various other online readability calculators, graphs and measurement tools to provide users with a free and concise result directly from its own website.
These tools help you determine where your text may be difficult for based on things like the number of words or syllables. Depending on the formula you´re evaluating, you may be able to score texts for different types of grade levels and higher (or lower)
In addition to the common readability formulas like the New Dale-Chall Readability formula and the Spache Readability Calculator, you can also see the grade level of your text based on the Fry Graph or Raygor Estimate Graph.
Unlike most online readability checkers, which let you upload a file, paste in plain text or link to a document to check it, ReadabilityFormulas only lets you paste in plain text:
Once the readability check is complete, you’ll see your results on a separate screen. The results page will look something like this, with the notes in red corresponding to your scores, respectively:
Owing to its simple design and fast processing, you’re not likely to encounter many errors with the Reading Level Calculator. However, if you do, here’s what you’re most likely to see:
I get an error message, “Sorry, we only process readability assessments from humans, not computer robots”.
This error message comes up if you forget to click the “I’m a human” security check box after pasting in your text. Hit your browser’s back button and click the box to proceed.
I’m not able to paste my text into the readability checker
Given the site's dated design, it’s clearly intended for desktops rather than mobile devices. It’s best to use ReadabilityFormulas on a desktop PC rather than a mobile phone or tablet if you have problems.
Failing that, make sure you’ve disabled any ad blockers or other pop-up blockers. If you continue to have problems, it’s a good idea to reach out to the site’s administrators and let them know about the issue you’re having.
Excellent Tool for Grade-Specific Text Adaptation
One of the main advantages of using ReadabilityFormulas’ reading level calculator is that you can fine-tune your results to specific grade levels based on the readability score you want to use. This is particularly useful for those in the educational field or those involved in pedagogical studies who need to adapt their content for a specific grade level or age range.
Get Results in Seconds
Another major advantage is that, without having all of the bells and whistles of other writing tools, ReadabilityFormulas reading level calculator is FAST. You’ll get your results in a matter of seconds and can hover over each of the readability formulas to see how the number was reached, as well as get important stats about your text for further improvement and refinement.
See the Results from Multiple Readability Formulas
Other readability checkers focus on specific formulas like Flesch-Kincaid or others. With ReadabilityFormulas’ reading level calculator, you can see the results from seven of the most popular tools, as well as a general consensus about the general age range, grade level and difficulty of your text.
No Color-Coded Results
Because ReadabilityFormulas’ Reading Level Checker is a no-frills readability tool, you won’t get color-coded, at-a-glance results. You can see the statistics of your text, such as how many words have more than X number of syllables, but it doesn’t come with the visual aides that competing readability tools offer.
Can Only Copy and Paste Plain Text
If you want to check the readability of a PDF or Google Doc, you’re out of luck unless you copy and paste the text into the ReadabilityFormulas website. This puts some limitations on checking for readability beyond what’s possible through plain text.
No SEO Support
With other readability tools, like Originality.AI’s free readability checker, in addition to getting your readability score and approximate grade level, you’ll also get your keyword density, a helpful tool if you want to optimize your content for Google and other search engines.
ReadabilityFormulas’ Reading Level Calculator and Originality.AI’s free readability tool have several points in common. Both platforms return blazingly fast results, and both offer you the ability to see your readability scores across a number of well-known formulas.
However, with Originality.AI’s free readability tool, you get all of the benefits of a more detailed readability scan, such as color-coded highlighting to see which text may be problematic or keyword density numbers to help with search engine optimization.
In addition, Originality.AI’s tool checks 11 different readability formulas, including those that ReadabilityFormulas does not, such as the FORCAST grade level, Powers Sumner-Kearl and more, giving you even more ways to ensure your text can be read and understood by your target audience.
Using the latest in artificial intelligence, natural language processing and machine learning, Originality.AI’s readability tool works by examining the length and complexity of your sentences. It considers key metrics such as the length of the sentence, the number of words per sentence and the number of syllables in each word. In addition, it understands if you’re using specialized or complex vocabulary and may highlight that in its results.
The different readability formulas like Coleman-Liau or Gunning Fog use various calculations to determine the results. Originality.AI uses these same formulas to calculate your text’s readability according to those scoring metrics. It then highlights specific areas of concern for you to address on a case by case basis.
It will also provide you with your keyword and keyphrase (2 words) density if you’re optimizing the content for search engines. This makes Originality.AI’s free readability checker an invaluable tool for educators, content creators, SEO professionals and writers alike.
The bottom line is that ReadabilityFormulas reading level calculator is a quick and handy little tool that works great if you need to quickly check a text snippet or a longer passage (up to 3,000 words). But beyond these quick check abilities, it simply doesn’t have the depth or detail that other tools have. It’s worth noting that both Originality.AI’s readability checker and ReadabilityFormulas’ calculator are free, yet the Originality.AI tool encompasses many of the same features as paid and premium-grade tools at no extra cost.
To get the full picture of your content’s readability, as well as check it for plagiarism and potential AI writing, sign up for Originality.AI today. With prices as low as 1 cent per 100 words, it’s an economical, easy and straightforward way to scan your content and protect yourself from the bias and false information put out by AI.
While we at Originality.AI believe that artificial intelligence has its place, we’re also big proponents of human writing and the authenticity and trustworthiness that human-written content offers to readers. These are things that, given the state of the technology today, AI simply can’t compete with, and it will be several years until it can – if it can.
For this reason, we invite you to check your content thoroughly using our variety of helpful tools. Everything we do is designed to help content creators write and publish their best work, so try our free readability checker and judge the results for yourself!
