Check your resume's ATS score in about 30 seconds
Paste in what you're currently sending. You get a score, 23 checks grouped by what they measure, and a fix list that quotes your own lines back to you. It runs in your browser and needs no account. A free scan reports up to 65; Pro scores out of 100.
Updated 18 August 2026
What the score actually measures
23 checks in six categories, each scored separately, because "your resume is a 74" is useless on its own. The number that matters is the one that's low.
- Content. What your bullets actually claim, and whether they prove it. Quantified impact is the check most resumes fail.
- Sections. Whether a parser can find and label the parts of your resume: contact details, headings, and a date range on every role.
- ATS Essentials. Length, depth per role, and whether you slip into first person once a human is reading.
- Recruiter Red Flags. The tells a recruiter reads as padding: six bullets opening on the same verb, passive voice, buzzword density, tense drift.
- Seniority Signals. Whether the resume argues the level it is claiming. Leadership language, scope and scale, detail against years of experience.
- Bias & Date Exposure. What your dates and formatting give away before anyone reads a bullet, including graduation years you don't need to include.
The first three categories, 10 checks in total, are free for everyone with no account — every finding, quoting your own lines. The other three show their category percentage and keep their findings for a paid plan. The free score itself reports up to 65: above that the number is held and the report says so. $4.99 covers seven days, scores out of 100, and adds the suggested rewrites and the PDF download. Nothing auto-renews. See what Pro covers.
An example of the output, not a measurement of any real resume.
Four steps, none of them homework
Paste it or upload it
Paste the text straight in, or drop a PDF and let the extractor pull it apart. Whatever you're currently sending is the right thing to test.
Add the job posting, or don't
With a posting, you get keyword coverage against that specific role. Without one, you get a general parse-and-phrasing check.
Read the fix list
Issues come back worst first, with the reason and the wording to use instead. Not "improve your bullets" but which bullet, and what's missing from it.
Fix it in the editor
Send the resume into the builder with the fix list attached, and the same score runs live while you edit, so you can watch each change land.
What an ATS does, and what it doesn't
You will read, on a lot of sites, that applicant tracking systems automatically reject three quarters of resumes before a human sees them. That isn't how they work. An ATS is a database with search on top of it. It stores applications, and recruiters search that store using the terms from the role they're filling.
Which is worse for you, not better. Nobody rejects you; you simply never appear in the search. If your job titles parsed into the wrong fields, or your resume never uses the phrase the recruiter typed, you aren't in the result set, and there is no rejection email to tell you so. That is the failure this checker is looking for.
Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS, Taleo, SuccessFactors and Ashby each parse a little differently, and no tool can tell you which one an employer runs. They break on the same things, though, so the checks here target those shared failure points rather than imitating any single vendor.
What makes a resume ATS-friendly
Most of it is layout rather than writing. A parser reads a page as a stream of text, so anything that hides text from that stream, or reorders it, costs you.
Parses cleanly
- One column, top to bottom
- Headings a parser knows: Experience, Education, Skills
- Contact details in the body, not the header
- A date range on every role
- Selectable text in the exported PDF
- The posting's own wording for the same skill
Breaks parsing
- Two columns, read straight across
- Tables and text boxes holding your experience
- Your name and email inside a header or footer
- Icons standing in for the words phone or email
- A PDF exported as an image, or a scan
- Invented headings like "Where I've Made a Dent"
If your current layout is the problem, starting from one that already parses is faster than repairing it. Every resume template here is single-column with standard headings, and the resume samples show the same structure filled in by role. For the reasoning behind the format, we tested it in Best ATS Resume Template 2026.
ATS score questions
What is an ATS score?
Most mid-size and large employers keep applications in an applicant tracking system, and recruiters search that database rather than opening every file. If your PDF parses badly, your experience lands in the wrong fields and you don't come up in the search. An ATS score estimates how cleanly your resume parses and how well it matches what a recruiter would search for.
What is a good ATS score for a resume?
Above 85 is strong. Between 70 and 84 is workable but leaving something on the table, usually keywords. Below 70 normally means a structural problem: a two-column layout, missing section headings, or bullets with no specifics in them. The checker tells you which of those it found.
How do I check my resume's ATS score?
Paste your resume text or upload a PDF, then run the scan. You can score against a specific job posting, or run a general check with no posting at all. Either way the score and the findings appear straight away, with no account and no wait.
Is the ATS resume checker free?
Yes. The score, the findings that quote your own lines, and the fix list are free for everyone, with no account. Three of the six categories keep their detail for a paid plan and show only their category percentage. The $4.99 pass covers seven days, adds those categories, the suggested rewrites and the PDF download, and never auto-renews.
How many checks does the scan run?
23, grouped into six categories. 10 of them are free for everyone: contact information, section headings, quantified impact, whether every role carries a number, action-verb phrasing, filler and clichés, depth per role, dates on every role, length, and third-person voice.
Is my resume uploaded or stored anywhere?
No. The scan runs entirely in your browser. A PDF is read locally with pdf.js and the text is held in your tab's session storage, which is discarded when you close it. Nothing is posted to a server, so there is no copy of your resume for us to keep.
Which applicant tracking systems does this check against?
It doesn't imitate any one vendor. Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS, Taleo, SuccessFactors and Ashby all differ in the details, but they fail on the same things: text trapped in a header, a two-column layout read in the wrong order, section headings a parser can't recognise, and a PDF whose text isn't selectable. The checks target those shared failure modes.
Does an employer see my ATS score?
No. It isn't a number any employer generates, sees or stores. It's our estimate of how your resume behaves inside the software they use, which is a different thing from a grade they assign you.
What makes a resume ATS-friendly?
Standard section headings, one column, no tables or text boxes, no content trapped in headers and footers, keywords that match the posting's own wording, and a PDF whose text can actually be selected. That last one catches more people than the rest combined.
Should I send a PDF or a Word document?
A PDF, as long as its text is selectable. Try highlighting a line in your own file: if nothing selects, it was exported as an image and a parser reads none of it. Word files parse reliably too, but they reflow on someone else's machine, so what the recruiter opens may not be what you laid out.
Can I check my resume against a specific job posting?
Yes. Paste the posting alongside your resume and you get keyword coverage against that role: the terms it uses that your resume doesn't, ranked by how often the posting repeats them. Without a posting you get a general parse and phrasing check instead.
More on the number and what to do about it: what your ATS score actually means, converting an old CV into an ATS resume, and passing the parser and the recruiter.
Scored across 23 checks, weakest first. Free scans report up to 65; Pro scores out of 100.