I Built a Reading Time Calculator Because I Was Tired of Guessing

The Itch I Had to Scratch Every time I finished writing a blog post, I'd do the same thing: paste it into a random word counter, then open a separate tab for a reading time estimator, then maybe copy it into Hemingway Editor for a readability check. Three tools. Three tabs. Same content. That friction built up over months until I finally just... built one thing that does all of it. That's how ReadMetric came to be. Why This Problem Felt Worth Solving Content creators obsess over SEO, formatting, and engagement — but reading time is one of those quiet signals that actually affects whether someone clicks "read more" on a platform like Medium or Dev.to. Studies have shown that readers self-select based on time commitment. Knowing your article is "4 min read" vs "12 min read" changes decisions — both for the writer and the reader. I wanted a single tool that would tell me: Estimated reading time Word count Character count Sentence count Readability score (Flesch-Kincaid) All at once, insta