Free ATS Resume Checker
A resume scanner that reads your resume the way an applicant tracking system has to, rates it out of 100 and lists the three fixes that matter most. Drop it in — about 20 seconds.
How the resume scanner works
Four steps, and you can stop after any of them. Nothing is stored unless you are signed in.
- 1
Drop in your resumeFree
- 2
Five areas scoredFree
- 3
Score + top 3 fixesFree
- 4
Full breakdown, then fix itFree account
What the score checks
Five areas, each scored 0–100 and combined into one overall score. The same five areas decide whether a recruiter keeps reading.
ATS compatibility
Standard section headings, a single-column layout, no text locked in tables, images or headers.
Content quality
Clear, specific writing with strong verbs, no filler and no typos.
Achievements & impact
Results with numbers — what changed because of you — instead of a list of duties.
Keywords
The skills and terms recruiters search for in your field, used where they are true.
Presentation
Consistent formatting, sensible length, and the most important things easy to find.
What is a good resume score?
The scorer is deliberately strict: it is told that most resumes belong between 40 and 65 and that only genuinely strong ones earn 80 or more, so a 75 is a good result. The bands below are the rubric the AI scores against. They describe the resume, not how it ranks against other people — we do not have data to make that comparison, so we do not show one.
| Score | Band | What it usually means |
|---|---|---|
| 85–100 | Excellent | Quantified wins in nearly every bullet, clean structure, the right keywords. Polish only. |
| 75–84 | Good | Competitive for most roles. Usually two or three bullets still describe duties instead of results. |
| 60–74 | Average | Likely to pass a first screen but not to stand out. The typical gap: few numbers, generic summary. |
| 40–59 | Needs work | Reads like a job description. Missing results, keywords or a standard structure. |
| 0–39 | Major issues | Formatting a parser cannot read, missing sections, or almost no detail. |
Rate my resume: a real result, start to finish
A made-up marketing coordinator resume, run through this checker on October 1, 2026. Most of its bullets describe duties, which is the most common reason for a low score. This is exactly what you see without an account: the score and the top three fixes.
Marketing Coordinator, Brightline Outdoor Co. (2022 – present)
• Responsible for managing the company’s social media accounts and posting content.
• Helped with planning trade show events.
• Worked on the email newsletter every month.
• Assisted the marketing manager with various tasks as needed.
Needs work
- Experience, Brightline: Replace 'Responsible for managing' with a specific campaign or content example and its result, if you can verify one.
- Experience, Brightline: For 'Helped with planning trade show events,' name your contribution and the event's scale or outcome.
- Experience, Brightline: Clarify what you produced for the 'email newsletter every month' and add a verified audience or performance measure.
What an ATS actually does with your resume
When you apply online, your resume almost always lands in an applicant tracking system first. In Harvard Business School's 2021 survey, more than 90% of employers said they use theirs to filter or rank candidates. The popular claim that ATS “auto-reject 75% of resumes” has no primary source — see our fact-check. The real risks are quieter: a parser that loses part of your resume, and a recruiter search that ranks you below people who used the posting's own words.
You apply
Parser extracts text
Fields are filled
Knockout questions
Recruiter searches
A person reads
EXPERIENCE
Operations Analyst, Northwind
Cut invoice errors 18% by…
Built weekly KPI dashboard…
EDUCATION
B.S. Economics, 2021
SKILLS
SQL · Excel
Tableau
CONTACT
jane@email.com
Austin, TX
- EXPERIENCE SKILLS← Two headings merged into one line
- Operations Analyst, Northwind SQL · Excel← Skills glued onto the job title
- Cut invoice errors 18% by… Tableau← Bullet and skill mixed
- Built weekly KPI dashboard… CONTACT← Sidebar heading inside a bullet
- EDUCATION jane@email.com← Email lands in Education
- B.S. Economics, 2021 Austin, TX← Location glued onto the degree
Jane Rivera · jane@email.com · Austin, TX
EXPERIENCE
Operations Analyst, Northwind
Cut invoice errors 18% by…
SKILLS
SQL, Excel, Tableau
- Jane Rivera · jane@email.com · Austin, TX
- EXPERIENCE
- Operations Analyst, Northwind
- Cut invoice errors 18% by…
- SKILLS
- SQL, Excel, Tableau
Common ATS resume mistakes the checker flags
These are the problems that most often make a resume hard for a tracking system to read or rank. The full rules, with an annotated example, are in our ATS-friendly resume guide.
Avoid: Text inside images, logos or skill bars
Avoid: Contact details only in the page header
Be careful: Tables and multi-column layouts
Be careful: Creative section names
Be careful: Missing the posting's terms
Do: Duties rewritten as results
Keyword gaps are specific to each job: our guide to ATS keywords shows how to find them in a posting, and the tailoring tool (Pro) rewrites your resume to one job description without inventing experience.
What's free, and what isn't
The checker's result is free with or without an account. We make money from Pro, which is about fixing and sending the resume, not checking it. Comparing checkers? See the best free ATS resume checkers, compared.
No account
Free account
Pro
ATS resume checker FAQ
Is the ATS resume checker free?
Yes. Upload or paste your resume on this page and you get your score out of 100 and your top 3 fixes with no sign-up and no card. A free account adds the score for each of the 5 areas, what already works, the remaining fixes and a written review. There is no monthly scan limit; a short per-minute limit stops abuse.
How does an ATS resume checker work?
It reads your resume the way an applicant tracking system has to: as plain text. It flags what a parser can lose (tables, columns, text in headers or images, non-standard section names), checks whether the skills and terms recruiters search for are in the text, and scores five areas against a fixed rubric: ATS compatibility, content quality, achievements and impact, keywords, and presentation.
Is a resume scanner the same as a resume checker or a resume rater?
Yes. "Resume scanner", "ATS checker", "resume score checker" and "rate my resume" tools all do the same job: read the resume as text and grade it. This page used to be split across two URLs (a scorer and a checker) running the same scanner; it is now one tool.
What is a good resume score?
The rubric is strict: 40–65 is typical and 75 or more is competitive; 85+ is rare. The score describes your resume against the rubric, not against other people. We do not have data on how other people's resumes score, so we do not show a percentile.
Why did my score change when I scanned the same resume again?
AI scoring has some randomness, so the same resume can move a few points between runs. Treat a change of 3 points or less as noise; a bigger jump after an edit means the edit mattered.
Is there one official ATS score?
No. Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS and others each work differently, and most rank or filter by recruiter-set criteria rather than a universal score. Any checker's score, including ours, is an estimate of how readable and relevant your resume is, not a number an employer sees.
Do 75% of resumes really get rejected by ATS?
There is no primary source for that number; it traces back to a 2012 sales pitch from a company that later shut down. What is documented: most employers use their recruiting system to filter or rank candidates, and many rejections come from knockout questions or from not matching the job description's terms. Our ATS statistics fact-check has the sources.
Is my resume stored?
Not if you are signed out: the text is sent to the AI for scoring and not saved. If you are signed in and upload a file, the original file is saved to your account so you can find it later.
Which file formats can I check, and which is best for ATS?
The checker reads PDF, DOCX and TXT files, or pasted text. For applying, a text-based PDF or a DOCX with a single column and standard headings both parse well in modern systems; if a posting asks for a specific format, use that one. Scanned PDFs are images of text and cannot be read — paste the text instead.