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Free Online Essay Checker
The Tools Kit’s free Essay Checker gives you a quick proofreading pass before you hand in an assignment. Paste your essay above and click Check Essay to see the word count, sentence count, average sentence length, and a Flesch Reading Ease score, followed by a list of grammar and style issues, each quoted in context so you can find it in your draft.
It is a rule-based essay grammar check and readability checker, not a plagiarism checker or an AI detector, and it does not grade your argument. Everything runs in your browser, so your essay is never uploaded.
How to Check Your Essay
- 1
Paste your essay
Paste or type your essay, draft, or paragraph into the text box. There is no file upload, so copy the text out of Word or Google Docs first.
- 2
Click Check Essay
The checker counts words and sentences, works out the average sentence length and a Flesch Reading Ease score, and runs its grammar and style rules on the whole text.
- 3
Review the flagged issues
Each issue shows a short message and a quoted snippet of the surrounding text. A red border marks a mechanical error; an amber border marks a style suggestion to double-check.
- 4
Revise and check again
Fix the text in the box and click Check Essay again. Editing hides the old results so you never read stale numbers, and Clear empties the box for the next draft.
You do not need an account, and you can check as many drafts as you like.
What the Essay Checker Flags
The checks are written as precise rules rather than an AI model, which keeps them fast and private. Mechanical errors, marked with a red border, are:
- Extra spaces — two or more spaces between words.
- Repeated words — the same word twice in a row, such as “the the”.
- Space before punctuation — a space before a period, comma, question mark, exclamation mark, semicolon, or colon.
- Repeated punctuation — such as “,,” or “!!” (an ellipsis and “?!” are allowed).
- Missing space after punctuation — a period, comma, question mark, or exclamation mark followed directly by a capital letter, as in “end.Next”.
- Lowercase sentence start — an opening sentence that begins with a small letter. The checker only splits sentences where the next one starts with a capital, so a lowercase start in the middle of the text is not flagged.
Style suggestions, marked in amber, are prompts to re-read rather than confirmed mistakes:
- Possible passive voice — a form of “be” followed by a word ending in -ed, such as “was analyzed”. Irregular passives like “was written” are not caught.
- Commonly confused words — every use of a word from 11 groups, including their/there/they’re, your/you’re, its/it’s, then/than, affect/effect, loose/lose, to/too/two, and principal/principle, so you can confirm you picked the right one.
These are the same rules used by the standalone Grammar Checker, which is handy for a single paragraph or an email. There is no spelling dictionary here, so run your word processor’s spell check too.
Flesch Reading Ease Score for Essays
The readability score uses the Flesch Reading Ease formula:
Score = 206.835 − 1.015 × (words ÷ sentences) − 84.6 × (syllables ÷ words)
Long sentences and long words both push the score down. The tool rounds the result to one decimal place, keeps it between 0 and 100, and adds a label: 90 and above is Very easy, 70-89 Easy, 60-69 Standard, 50-59 Fairly difficult, 30-49 Difficult, and below 30 Very difficult. Syllables are estimated by counting vowel groups, so treat the score as a close estimate.
Worked example: “Climate change is one of the most important issues facing modern society. Governments must act quickly to reduce emissions.” has 19 words in 2 sentences, an average of 9.5 words per sentence, and 33 syllables by the tool’s count. That gives 206.835 − 9.643 − 146.937 = 50.3, labeled Fairly difficult.
Most academic essays score between about 30 and 60, and that is normal for formal writing. A low score is a signal to look for sentences you could split, not a grade. For a Flesch-Kincaid grade level and long sentences highlighted one by one, use the Readability Checker.
What an Essay Checker Cannot Do
A rule-based checker is a fast first pass, not a replacement for re-reading your work. It does not judge your thesis, structure, or evidence, and it cannot detect plagiarism, because that means comparing your text against a large database of published work. If you are worried about wording that sits too close to a source, rephrase it in your own words, using the Paraphrasing Tool only as a starting point, and cite the source properly with the Citation Generator.
If you need to hit a precise word or character count for an assignment, the Word Counter also shows character count and reading time, and the Text Summarizer can pull out the key sentences of a long draft so you can check your argument still holds together.
Common uses
- A final proofreading pass on a college essay, coursework, or homework before submission
- Checking whether a draft’s reading level fits its audience, such as a class or a general reader
- Spotting long sentences by watching the average words per sentence fall as you revise
- Catching typing slips like doubled words and stray spaces left over from editing
- Reviewing a personal statement, blog post, or report for passive voice and mixed-up words
Find more free tools for students and writers in the Writing & Citation Tools collection on The Tools Kit.
Essay checker terms explained
| Term | What it means here |
|---|---|
| Flesch Reading Ease | A 0-100 readability score based on sentence length and syllables per word; higher means easier to read |
| Average words per sentence | Total words divided by total sentences, shown to one decimal place |
| Passive voice | A sentence where the subject receives the action ("the data was collected") instead of performing it |
| Confusable words | Pairs or trios that sound alike but mean different things, such as affect and effect or then and than |
| Repeated word | The same word typed twice in a row, such as "the the", a common slip when editing |
| Error vs style suggestion | Errors are mechanical slips worth fixing; style suggestions are prompts to re-read a phrase, not proof it is wrong |
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. The Essay Checker is free with no signup, no daily limit, and no paid upgrade. Paste an essay, click Check Essay, and the results appear straight away.
Paste the essay into the box and click Check Essay. The tool flags extra spaces, repeated words, a space before punctuation, repeated punctuation, a missing space after a period or comma, an opening sentence that starts with a lowercase letter, possible passive voice, and commonly confused words, each with a snippet of the surrounding text.
No. It checks grammar, style, and readability only. Plagiarism detection needs a large external index of published text to compare against, and this tool runs entirely in your browser without one, so it cannot tell you whether text was copied.
No. There is no spelling dictionary in this tool, so a misspelled word is not flagged unless it triggers another rule. Run a spell check in your word processor as well before you submit.
No. The Essay Checker does not include an AI detector. It measures readability and flags mechanical and style issues, which apply the same way to any text.
Most academic essays land between about 30 and 60, which the tool labels Difficult or Fairly difficult. A score of 60-70 (Standard) suits general readers, while a score under 30 suggests very long sentences or dense vocabulary that may be worth simplifying.
Score = 206.835 - 1.015 x (words / sentences) - 84.6 x (syllables / words). The tool rounds it to one decimal place and keeps it between 0 and 100. Syllables are counted with a vowel-group rule, so the score is a close estimate rather than a dictionary-exact figure.
The confusable-word rule flags every occurrence of words from 11 commonly mixed-up groups, such as their/there/they're and to/too/two, as a reminder to double-check. It does not read the sentence for meaning, so a flag here is a prompt, not a confirmed mistake.
No. It looks for a form of "be" (is, are, was, were, be, been, being) followed by a word ending in -ed, such as "was analyzed". Passives built on irregular verbs, such as "was written", are not caught, and an adjective ending in -ed can occasionally be flagged.
No. All of the checks run in your browser with JavaScript. Your essay is not sent to a server, saved, or used to train anything, which makes it safe for unsubmitted coursework.
The tool sets no word limit, so you can paste a full essay. Very long documents may take a moment longer to check depending on your device.
Both use the same rule-based grammar and style checks. The Essay Checker adds word count, sentence count, average sentence length, and a Flesch Reading Ease score, so it is better suited to reviewing a whole essay in one pass.
Reviewed by Raja Jahangir · Last reviewed: October 7, 2026
How do you check an essay for grammar and readability?
To check an essay, paste the draft and click Check Essay. The report shows word count, sentence count, average words per sentence, and a Flesch Reading Ease score from 0 to 100 labelled from Very Easy to Very Difficult. Below that, rule-based grammar checks flag repeated words, spacing slips, missing capitals, passive voice, and confusable words.
What Flesch Reading Ease score should an essay have?
Most academic essays score between 30 and 60 on Flesch Reading Ease, which corresponds to college-level reading. A score above 60 reads like a magazine article and may feel too casual for formal work, while below 30 is dense even for graduates. Shorter sentences and fewer three-syllable words raise the score.