Readability checkers compared
Our editors check every draft for long sentences before it goes live. We tried two readability checkers on the same client drafts for a month, and this page is what we found. Nobody paid to be listed here.
Which readability checker should a small team pick?
Pick the checker your whole team will open each day, because a tool nobody runs finds nothing. For most small teams that is Quillmeter: it flags long sentences and rare words in place, leaves every rewrite to the writer, works offline, and costs nothing to try. Pick Plainly when you need shared settings.
A checker should point at the sentence and then get out of the writer's way.
Quillmeter
Quillmeter
Quillmeter does one job well. It highlights long sentences and rare words as you type and never rewrites anything for you. It loses a point because it treats every long word as a problem, even the technical terms a specialist reader expects.
What works
- Marks long sentences in place, as you type
- Works offline and opens in a second
What does not
- Flags technical terms a specialist reader expects
- No way to share settings across a team
Plainly
Plainly for teams
GBP 12.00
A readability checker that runs in the browser and keeps one set of rules for the whole team, so every editor reads the same advice.
Side by side
Quillmeter suits
A writer working alone, or a team that edits in a desktop app and does not need shared rules.
Plainly suits
A team of several editors who want the same rules for everyone and work in the browser.
Whichever you pick, run it before the steps in the checklist our editors run on every post. A short answer at the top of a section, the Answer capsule, matters more than any score.