Headline Score Checker
Score a headline out of 100 on length, word balance, emotional pull and structure — and get told specifically what to change, not just what is wrong.
- Type a headline and the specific fixes appear here.
Rewriting needs a free account. Scoring runs in your browser and always will. Rewriting runs a model on our side, so it is the one part behind a sign-in — no card, and it stays free.
Start freeRuns entirely in this browser. Nothing you type is uploaded, stored or seen by us.
Three steps, no account.
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01
Type your headline
The score updates as you type, so you can feel which edits help.
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02
Read the breakdown
Each component scores separately, so you can see whether the problem is length, vocabulary or structure.
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03
Apply the suggestions
They are specific to your headline — which word to cut, what kind of word is missing.
A headline does two jobs at once: it has to survive being truncated in a search result or a feed, and it has to make someone choose it over everything else on the screen. Those pull in different directions, which is why headlines that read well out loud often perform badly, and vice versa.
This scores the measurable half. Length in words and characters, the balance of common, uncommon, emotional and power words, and structural features like numbers and questions that reliably change click-through. It cannot judge whether your idea is interesting — that part is still yours.
Headline Score Checker, answered.
Six to twelve words, and around 55 characters. The character figure comes from search results, which truncate near 60; the word figure comes from how people scan — under six words tends to be too vague to promise anything, over twelve and the ending gets skipped.
Power words carry urgency or authority — "proven", "essential", "instantly". Emotional words carry feeling — "surprising", "brutal", "beautiful". A headline made only of common words is forgettable; one made only of power words reads as spam. The balance is what the score is measuring.
Yes, consistently, and for a structural reason rather than a psychological one: a number sets an explicit expectation of length and format, so the reader knows what they are committing to. Odd numbers marginally outperform even ones in most tests, though the effect is small.
No, and it should not be treated as one. The score measures form, not substance. A perfectly formed headline about something nobody cares about will lose to an awkward one about something they do. Use it to catch mechanical problems, not to pick the idea.
This is one job. The workspace does the rest.
The free tools stay free and stay ungated. Recast is where they stop being separate tabs and start handing work to each other — a link becomes a card, an article and a week of posts without you moving anything between them.