Free ATS Keyword Check
Paste your resume and the job description. You will get an ATS match score, the keywords you are missing, and the three fixes worth making first. No signup, no email required.
How this check works
Most applications are screened by an applicant tracking system before a recruiter reads them. The system parses your file into fields, then matches the posting's terms against your resume. This tool reproduces the part you can control: it extracts the keywords that matter for the specific posting you paste, checks which of them appear in your resume, and flags the formatting problems that break parsing.
It reads only what you paste. It does not invent experience, and it will not tell you an ATS will pass you — no tool can promise that. Use it to find gaps, then fix them with your real work. For role-by-role keyword lists, start from the ATS keyword guides.
What this check can and cannot tell you
Being precise about limits is more useful than a bigger number, so here is the honest version.
- It can tell you which terms in a specific posting are absent from your resume text, whether your file structure is likely to parse cleanly, and which of your sections carry no measurable outcome.
- It cannot tell you whether your experience is relevant enough, whether the salary band matches your expectation, or whether a human will like your writing. Those are judgement calls, not pattern matches.
- It does not rewrite anything. The fixes it suggests are direction — you still write the sentences, because they have to describe work you actually did.
One consequence worth internalising: a keyword gap is usually a structure problem, not a vocabulary problem. If your strongest experience is buried in a bullet with no outcome, adding the missing term will not fix how it reads.
Our own score varies between runs
The score above is produced by a language model, and language models are not deterministic. We measured it rather than assuming: the same resume, the same job description, five consecutive runs — overall scores of 52, 52, 52, 52 and 58, with individual dimensions moving further (structure clarity ranged 40–55 on the same input).
So treat any single number as a reading, not a verdict. A three-point difference between two attempts means nothing; a twenty-point difference is worth acting on. If you re-run the check after editing, compare the pattern of missing keywords, which is far more stable than the total.
We are stating this because most tools do not, and because a score presented as exact invites you to over-trust it. For the same reason we do not publish a "percentage of resumes rejected by ATS" figure: the widely quoted number traces to a defunct startup's sales material, not to a study.
We traced that figure in full — where it came from, what is actually true about automated screening, and what to fix instead — in Do ATS systems really reject 75% of resumes?
Before you run the check
- Use the full posting, not the summary. Requirements sections carry the must-have terms; the two-line intro at the top usually carries none of them.
- Paste your resume as plain text. Select the text in your document and copy it. If the paste comes out scrambled, that scrambling is roughly what a parser sees — fix that before hunting for keywords.
- Run it once per posting you care about. One resume, one target. Optimising for several postings at once produces a resume that competes for none of them.
- Fix, then re-run. The second run is where the value is: it shows whether your edits actually moved the terms the posting screens on. See the free ATS-friendly resume template if you would rather rebuild the structure first.
Common questions
- Is the ATS match score an official score that employers see?
- No. There is no universal ATS score, and employers never see this number. Different systems rank resumes differently, and many recruiters simply filter by keyword before reading anything. Treat the score as a directional indicator of how well your resume matches one specific posting — not as a grade.
- Will a high score get me an interview?
- No, and any tool claiming that is misleading you. The check measures keyword coverage and formatting parseability. It cannot assess whether your experience is relevant, how a recruiter will read your bullets, or whether the team is even hiring. It removes one avoidable reason to be filtered out.
- Why does my score change when I paste a different job description?
- Because the score is relative to the posting you paste. The same resume can score highly against one posting and poorly against another. That is the point: keywords only matter in relation to a specific job.
- Should I add every missing keyword?
- Only the ones you can honestly support. A term you add but cannot discuss in an interview becomes a liability. If you genuinely lack a required skill, the useful move is to show adjacent experience and say so plainly rather than stuff the word in.
- Does formatting really matter more than wording?
- Parsing comes first. If your file uses two columns, tables, text inside images, or your contact details live in the document header, parts of your resume may never be read — and wording cannot help content that the machine did not see. That is why the check flags formatting before anything else.
- Do you store the resume I paste?
- The check processes what you paste and the result is returned to your browser. Resume text is not published anywhere, is excluded from search engine indexing, and stored data is deleted on the retention schedule described in our privacy policy. Do not paste anything you would not send to an employer.
- Is it really free, and do I need an account?
- Free, no account, and no email required — the role guides, templates, and calculators are all free to read and use as well. There is no paid version, no upgrade, and no checkout on this site.