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The Waffle-o-Meter.
A free corporate jargon checker.

Paste your copy, or scan any page. You get a Waffle Score out of 100, a breakdown of what is dragging it down, and your five worst sentences quoted back with a plain-English alternative for each. Higher score means more waffle.

Runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Methodology

How the score is calculated.

No vibes. Seven measures, fixed weights, same maths every time. Here is exactly what each one looks for, so you can argue with it.

30%

Buzzwords & jargon

Weighted matches against a curated lexicon of roughly 120 terms and phrases - synergy, leverage, best-in-class, seamless, holistic, move the needle. Terms are weighted 1 to 3 by how reliably they replace meaning rather than carry it. Scored per 100 words, so length does not skew it.

15%

Sentence length

Mean words per sentence, plus the share of sentences running over 30 words. Under 20 on average reads cleanly. Long sentences are where a point goes to hide.

15%

Claims without proof

Counts absolute claims - leading, unmatched, world-class - against the concrete numbers, percentages and figures in the same copy. Superlatives outnumbering evidence is the single clearest tell of B2B waffle.

13%

Nominalisation & passive voice

Abstract nouns built from verbs (optimisation, functionality, deliverables) and passive constructions. Both let a sentence describe an action without naming who does it.

12%

Paragraph length

Mean words per paragraph and the share running over 90 words. One paragraph should make one point. Dense blocks are also harder for an answer engine to lift as a self-contained passage.

10%

Filler & hedging

Openers and padding that can be deleted with no loss of meaning: in today’s fast-paced landscape, it’s no secret that, in order to, we believe that.

5%

Time to the point

How many words a reader gets through before the copy says what you actually do. Small weight, large real-world consequence.

+

The AI visibility layer

URL scans add checks the score does not touch: whether OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity and Google's AI crawlers are blocked in robots.txt, whether your text is actually in the served HTML or only appears after JavaScript runs, plus schema, headings and llms.txt. Reported separately, because they are a different kind of problem.

Where it is wrong

It is a rules engine, not a judge. It cannot tell that robust is the correct word in a structural engineering paper, or that a long sentence is doing real work. It reads one page, not your positioning. Treat a flagged term as a prompt to look again, not a verdict. And a score of zero is not the goal - a page can be perfectly plain and still say nothing worth reading.

Frequently asked questions

Seven things, weighted into one score. Buzzword and jargon density against a curated lexicon (30%), average sentence length (15%), unbacked superlatives versus concrete numbers (15%), nominalisation and passive voice (13%), paragraph length (12%), filler openers and hedging (10%), and how many words a reader waits before you say what you do (5%). A higher score means more waffle.
Yes. No sign-up, no email, no account. Paste mode runs entirely in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere. URL mode fetches the page through this site's server so the text can be read, because a browser is not allowed to read another website's content directly.
Under 15 is clear writing. 15 to 29 is mostly clear with a few habits worth trimming. 30 to 44 means the message is there but the reader has to dig. 45 to 59 means a buyer would skim it and leave none the wiser. 60 and above means the copy could describe almost any company, which is the real problem.
Because the page renders its content in JavaScript. The tool reads the HTML your server sends, which is also what most AI crawlers read. If the text is not in that HTML, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI crawlers may never see it either. That finding is usually more valuable than the waffle score itself.
Pasted text never leaves your browser. For URL checks the server keeps a copy of the fetched public page for 24 hours so repeat checks are instant, and a request count per IP address for rate limiting. No personal data is stored and nothing is shared.
The lexicon flags words that usually replace meaning rather than carry it - leverage, synergy, seamless, best-in-class, holistic, robust. Some have legitimate technical uses. The tool gives you the sentence and a plain-English alternative, and you decide. It is a prompt to look, not a verdict.
Indirectly, and it matters more than it used to. AI answer engines lift self-contained passages that answer a question directly. Copy padded with buzzwords, long sentences and passive constructions is harder to lift and less likely to be cited. Clear writing is now a retrieval advantage, not just a style preference.
Ben Harris at Cut the Waffle, a B2B SEO and AEO specialist based in Auckland, New Zealand. The tool exists because removing corporate waffle is a large part of the actual job.