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Free ATS resume checker

17 recruiter and ATS rules, checked in your browser in seconds. See your score, the exact lines costing you points, and how to fix them — no account, nothing stored.

Drop your resume here

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or paste the text

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Checked in your browser. We don't store your file, and pasted text never leaves this page.

No resume to hand? Start from ours:

Add a bit more — we need at least a few lines of your resume to check it.

Your result

Add your resume and run the check. Results appear here in seconds — nothing is uploaded when you paste.

  • Local checks17 run here
  • AI recruiter scanNot run
  • Job matchNeeds a job post

In the editor

You have the diagnosis. The fixes are the work.

This check reads the text you pasted. The editor scores the resume you are actually editing.

  • A score that updates as you edit

    Six categories, re-scored every time you change a line, each finding with a fix you can accept or ignore.

    Resume score

  • Rewrite lines in place

    Select any bullet in your resume and enhance it against the job you are applying for, without retyping the rest.

    Tailor to a job

  • Check any posting from the job page

    Scan a job against your resume without leaving the tab, then save it to the tracker.

    Chrome extensionComing soon
See everything in the editor
On this page

How to check your resume for ATS problems

  1. 01

    Add your resume

    Drop in a PDF or paste the text. No account, and the check runs in your browser.

  2. 02

    Run the instant check

    17 deterministic rules run at once and return a score out of 100, capped at 86 until the AI review.

  3. 03

    Read what failed

    Each failing rule names the problem in plain language, the category it dents, and the points it costs.

  4. 04

    Fix it in the editor

    Open the result in the free editor, where three of the fixes are one click and the AI review picks up the rest.

Getting a useful result

  • Upload the actual PDF you send to employers — page count and link formatting only exist in the file.
  • Fix the foundations first: a missing email or a broken link costs more points than any wording issue.
  • Aim for numbers in roughly half your bullets — the check wants evidence, not a metric in every line.
  • Treat the score as a pre-application self-check, not a verdict. The failing lines matter more than the number.

What an ATS resume check actually is

An ATS resume check looks for the mechanical faults that cost you before a human reads the page: contact details a parser cannot find, links with typos in them, template markers you forgot to fill, bullets with no evidence, walls of text where bullets belong. A good result is not a perfect 100 — it is a resume with no broken fundamentals and numbers behind roughly half its claims, so what a recruiter reads is your work rather than your formatting.

What we check — all 17 rules

Every rule below is deterministic. It counts, compares, or matches a pattern, which is why the same resume scores the same way every time and why the checks work in every language we support. Nothing here needs a model, an account, or a credit.

Foundations — can a recruiter reach you and read the page?

  1. Email address — the one thing no recruiter can work around.
  2. Phone number — the second channel that makes a callback possible.
  3. A LinkedIn or website link — most recruiters look you up before calling.
  4. Link plausibility — a link with a space in it, or with no dot at all, sends nobody anywhere.
  5. Bullets per role — a role with one bullet reads thin; a wall of them never gets read.
  6. Page length — flagged only on a measured page count, and only for genuine outliers.
  7. Graduation-year exposure — a degree year fifteen-plus years back invites age bias and adds nothing.

Impact — are you showing results, or listing duties?

  1. Quantified bullets — we want numbers in a healthy share of your experience bullets, not in every line.

Wording — does it read like one person wrote it carefully?

  1. Duplicated bullets — the same line twice is copy-paste residue, and it reads like it.
  2. Repeated opening words — three bullets starting with the same word loses a skimming reader.

Polish — the small things that read as carelessness

  1. [X] placeholders — an unresolved template marker reads as an unfinished draft.
  2. Date-format consistency — "Jan 2023" next to "03/2019" reads sloppy in any language.
  3. Bullet length — very short and very long bullets both get skipped.
  4. Bullet punctuation — some bullets ending in a period and some not is a visible inconsistency.
  5. Empty bullets — they print as stray dots.
  6. Summary depth — one more sentence on scope or specialty gives a recruiter a hook.
  7. Paragraphs pasted where bullets belong — a block of prose never gets read; two or three crisp bullets will.

Two rules from the full editor are deliberately not run here: whether your header carries both a name and a title, and whether your layout is single-column. Both need structure that a plain-text read of a PDF cannot recover honestly, and a wrong red mark on a free page you cannot argue with is worse than a missing check.

What the score means, and why it stops at 86

The number is computed in code from a fixed weight table — every point maps to a rule you can read, and nothing is guessed. The 14 points held back are the territory the deterministic layer cannot reach: whether a bullet demonstrates real impact rather than activity, whether your tenses are consistent, whether a recruiter would stumble over a gap or an odd progression. Those are judgment calls, and judgment is what the AI review adds.

So the instant check tops out at 86 by design. The score can only go up when you run the review — it never drops for not running it.

Read the failing lines, not the number

No score is standardized across tools, and a high one guarantees nothing. What is genuinely useful is the list of rules that failed, because each one names a specific thing to change. Fix those, and the number takes care of itself.

What it costs

The instant check is free, unlimited, and account-free — it runs in your browser, so there is nothing to meter. Opening the result in the editor is also free, and three of the fixes there (empty bullets, duplicated bullets, inconsistent punctuation) are a single click with no model involved. The AI review needs a free account; one-click AI rewrites and the recruiter verdict are Pro. A generous free tier is meant to show you every problem — Pro is for having them fixed for you.

Where to go next

  • ATS Keyword Scanner — this page asks "is this resume strong?"; the keyword scanner asks "does this specific posting's vocabulary appear?" Different question, and you want both before you apply.
  • Roast My Resume — the same weaknesses, delivered with considerably less tact.
  • Job Matcher — compare the resume you just checked against a real posting.
  • AI Resume Score — the full explainer for the review that lifts the ceiling above 86.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. The instant check is free and unlimited, with no account and no credit card. It runs entirely in your browser, so there is nothing for us to meter. The paid part of the product is the AI review and one-click fixes inside the editor — this check is not a trial of them.

No. If you paste text, it never leaves your browser. If you upload a PDF, it is sent once to extract the text and is not saved afterwards. The check itself — every rule, the score, the categories — runs on your device. No AI is involved in reading the file — we read the PDF's own text layer.

The 17 instant checks are deterministic: they count, compare, and match patterns, so they are right in every language. They cannot judge whether a bullet actually shows impact or whether your timeline reads oddly to a recruiter. Those 14 points are held back for the AI review rather than handed to you for free — so the score can only go up when you run it, never down for not running it.

Contact details, [X] placeholders, quantified bullets, date-format consistency, bullet length and punctuation, duplicated lines, repeated opening words, empty bullets, summary depth, bullets per role, page length, link plausibility, paragraphs pasted where bullets belong, and graduation years old enough to invite age bias.

Because a plain-text read of a PDF cannot always find a section. If we could not locate your summary, or your bullets, we say so instead of failing you for it — a wrong red mark is worse than a missing check. Open the result in the editor and those checks run against the real structured document.

No checker replicates a specific ATS — each one parses differently, and no vendor publishes its scoring. What this does is clear the fixable mistakes that cost you before a human ever reads the page: missing contacts, unparseable links, placeholder markers, walls of text. That is the part you control.

When the pieces are ready, assemble them.

The builder scores, tailors and formats the whole resume in one place. Everything you made here pastes straight in.

Build the full resumeSee templates