Score your text with Flesch–Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG, Coleman-Liau, ARI, Linsear Write, FORCAST, and Dale-Chall at once. Get a consensus grade level and see where the formulas agree or disagree.
Use the consensus score when you need one defensible grade-level number and you don't know which formula the audience cares about. For health writing you should still report SMOG; for K-12 still report Spache or Dale-Chall. The consensus shines for general business, marketing, or web copy.
The consensus replaces running each formula tab-by-tab. The trade-off: you lose the per-formula context (tips, pitfalls) that each individual tool provides. Use both — consensus for the headline number, individual formulas to diagnose why.
The consensus tool runs nine readability formulas on the same text in parallel: Flesch–Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG, Coleman-Liau, ARI, Linsear Write, FORCAST, Dale-Chall, and a grade-converted Flesch Reading Ease.
It reports the median grade as the consensus and the spread (max − min) as an agreement indicator.
High agreement (spread < 2 grades) means all formulas concur. Wide spread suggests mixed sentence lengths or vocabulary.
Flesch–Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG, Coleman-Liau, ARI, Linsear Write, FORCAST, Dale-Chall, and a grade-converted Flesch Reading Ease.
No single formula is reliable across every text type. The median across many formulas is robust to outliers and more defensible as a single number.
Spread less than 2 grade levels between the highest and lowest formula. Wide spread (>5 grades) means the formulas disagree, often due to mixed sentence lengths or vocabulary.
Input
Standard business prose: 4 sentences, mix of common and technical vocabulary.
Output
Consensus grade 10.4 — moderate agreement (spread 3.1 grades).
Eight formulas land between grade 8.6 and 11.7. The median (10.4) is the single most defensible grade level when no formula has special claim on the text type.
Classic 0–100 readability score.
readabilityU.S. grade level for your text.
readabilityPenalises complex (3+ syllable) words.
readabilityHealth & medical text grade level.