Paste any article, blog post, or document and instantly get reading time at slow, average, and fast speeds. Also shows word count, character count, sentence count, and estimated API cost for LLMs.
Free, no sign-up — one of the SaaSQuickStart Content & SEO tools.
Reading time is calculated by dividing the word count by a words-per-minute (WPM) figure. Research suggests average silent reading speed is around 238 WPM for adults (Brysbaert, 2019). The Flesch Reading Ease score is calculated with the formula: 206.835 − (1.015 × words/sentences) − (84.6 × syllables/words) . Syllables are approximated by counting vowel groups in each word and subtracting silent trailing "e" endings. This approximation is accurate to within 5–10% of true syllable counts for English text.
Reading speed is affected by familiarity with the subject matter, vocabulary range, working memory, and whether the reader subvocalizes (mentally "speaks" each word). Experts reading in their domain often exceed 400 WPM without skimming, while readers encountering dense unfamiliar material may fall below 150 WPM.
Most successful general-audience blog posts score 60–70 (Standard). Marketing copy often targets 70–80 (Easy). Academic papers typically score 0–30 (Very Difficult). Aim for the score that matches your audience — a developer documentation site can comfortably sit at 40–60.
The syllable counter uses a vowel-group heuristic which is accurate for most common English words. It may miscount words with silent letters, diphthongs, or non-English proper nouns. For publication-quality readability analysis, use a dedicated tool with a full CMU Pronouncing Dictionary lookup.
A paragraph is defined as a block of text separated from the next by one or more blank lines (two or more newline characters). Single line breaks are treated as soft wraps within the same paragraph. This matches the convention used in Markdown and most word processors.