The free ATS resume checker at workplacea.com/checker scores any resume you paste against the same published rubric the full editor uses — no account, no email capture, and nothing sent to a server, because the entire check runs in your browser. Paste your resume as plain text, optionally paste a job description beside it, select "Check my resume", and read an itemized report: a 0–100 score, category bars, and every underlying check in plain language.
What the checker does (and how it's built)
The checker does two things in sequence. First, it parses your pasted text with conservative heuristics — finding your contact details, bullets, skills, and summary the way a machine reader would. Second, it runs the parsed result through the same deterministic scoring rubric that powers the editor: Content, Format, and Completeness in a general check, plus Match when you add a job description.
Two design choices are worth noticing, because they're the opposite of how most "free resume scanners" work:
- It runs entirely in your browser. The page says it plainly: your resume never leaves this page. There's no upload, no server-side analysis, no account, and nothing emailed to you — because nothing about you is collected. The privacy reasoning is spelled out in privacy and your data.
- The rubric is published and deterministic. The same paste always produces the same score, and every point traces to a named check. Mystery match-scores designed to scare you into an upsell are the industry pattern this checker exists to counter — ATS resume test covers how to read any automated checker skeptically, including this one.
Running your first check
- Go to /checker. You'll see two text boxes side by side.
- Into "Your resume, as plain text", paste your resume. Open your PDF or document, select all, copy, paste. One line per bullet works best; the checker needs at least a paragraph's worth of text before the button activates.
- Optionally, paste a posting into "Paste a job description too (optional)". This adds keyword matching to the report — which of the posting's terms your resume already covers, and which are missing.
- Select "Check my resume".
- The report renders below, instantly — there's no processing wait because there's no server round trip.
If you get "We couldn't score that paste", the text arrived in a shape the parser couldn't work with — try plain text with one line per bullet, and strip any decorative characters your PDF copy-out produced.
Reading the parse honestly
Pasting flattens formatting, so the checker's parser makes conservative guesses about what's a bullet, what's a skill list, and what's your summary — the page notes this limitation right below the results. That's not a flaw to route around; it's the honest simulation of your real problem, because automated readers at employers face the same flattened view of your file. If your bullets aren't recognized as bullets in a plain-text paste, that's signal about the resume's machine readability.
Two practical implications. If the copy-paste from your own PDF comes out scrambled — wrong order, interleaved columns — your PDF has a reading-order problem worth fixing regardless of any score (see the ATS resume guide for what parses cleanly). And borderline parses mean the checker's number is a floor more than a ceiling: the full editor, which works from structured data rather than guessed structure, scores the same rubric more precisely.
Reading the score report
The report gives you a 0–100 total with a band label — "Needs work" below 50, "Getting there" to 74, "Strong" to 89, "Interview-ready" at 90 and up — then breaks it into categories:
- Content — whether bullets lead with strong verbs and carry evidence like metrics; the heaviest-weighted category.
- Format — date consistency and structural hygiene.
- Completeness — whether the expected sections and contact details exist.
- Match — only when you pasted a job description: keyword overlap between the posting and your resume, with matched and missing terms listed.
Each category expands into individual checks with pass/fail states and points, worded plainly. Work the failures with the highest point values first; ignore single-point stragglers until the big items are done. The full check-by-check rubric documentation lives in your resume score explained.
What the checker won't tell you
Honest limits, stated up front:
- It can't judge whether your experience fits a role, whether your best story is missing, or whether a bullet is true — it measures the document against a rubric, not you against a job.
- Its keyword matching is a useful approximation, not a replica of any specific employer's system; every ATS searches differently.
- A high score is necessary-but-not-sufficient: it means the mechanical objections are cleared, not that interviews are inbound. No automated checker — ours included — can promise more, and any that does is selling something.
From check to fix
The checker diagnoses; the editor treats. When your report shows real gaps, open the editor and either rebuild quickly from scratch or import your resume file to get structured, editable content. Inside the editor the same rubric runs live as you type, the score drawer ranks your next three fixes with links to the exact bullet, and Rewrite helps execute the Content fixes the checker flagged. Same rubric, same score scale — so progress in the editor is directly comparable to your checker baseline. The whole loop is free, including watermark-free PDF export at the end.
How our checker differs from match-score tools
Three structural differences. First, transparency: our rubric is published and itemized, while typical match-score tools show a percentage with no visible formula. Second, incentives: many free scanners exist to harvest your email and resume, then alarm you toward a paid rewrite — ours collects nothing and runs locally, so a scary number earns us nothing. Third, determinism: our score is reproducible, so improvement is measurable; opaque scores that wobble between runs can't tell you whether an edit helped. Skepticism is healthy in this category — apply the same tests to every tool, including this one.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an account or an email address?
No. The checker is fully usable with zero sign-up, and no report is emailed because nothing is collected. An account only becomes relevant when you move to the editor and want cloud sync.
Can I upload my PDF directly to the checker?
The checker takes pasted text, not files — that's what keeps it fully in-browser. Copy the text out of your PDF and paste it. If you want file parsing with a structured review, that's the editor's import flow, which accepts PDF and Word files up to 5 MB.
Why does the checker's score differ slightly from the editor's?
The checker guesses structure from flattened pasted text; the editor knows your structure exactly. The rubric is identical, but the inputs differ in fidelity, so small gaps are expected — the editor's number is the more precise one.
Is there a limit on checks?
No. Check as many resumes, revisions, and job description pairings as you like. It's your browser doing the work.
Run a check now
Paste your resume into the free checker and you'll have an itemized report in under a minute; bring the findings to the editor when you're ready to fix them. If a result confuses you, email contact@workplacea.com with what you saw and we'll explain what the rubric was reacting to.