Check your cold email in seconds — free cold email grader
Most cold emails fail before they're read. The subject line is too generic, the opening is self-focused, the CTA asks for too much. ReplyRate's free cold email checker grades your email across six evidence-backed dimensions and returns an overall score out of 100 — with plain-English feedback on exactly what to fix. No account required. No credit card. Paste your email, get your grade, and know whether it's ready to send before you commit it to a sequence of 1,000 prospects.
Is your cold email good enough to send?
Find out in under 10 seconds. Free, instant, actionable — no credit card needed.
Unlimited checks · No signup required · Results in seconds
What the cold email checker analyses
The checker evaluates six dimensions proven to directly correlate with cold email reply rates. Each dimension is scored independently, so you can see exactly which part of your email is strong and which is holding your grade down.
01
Subject Line Strength
Scored on curiosity, specificity, character count (ideal: 28–50), personalisation signals, and spam word avoidance. Your subject line determines open rate — everything else is irrelevant if this fails.
02
Personalisation Depth
Checks whether your email demonstrates genuine research or just mail-merge tokens. Deep personalisation references a specific trigger event, challenge, or detail that makes the message feel written for one person — not a segment of 5,000.
03
Value Proposition Clarity
Checks whether you articulate a concrete outcome (not just features), whether that outcome is relevant to the recipient, and whether you include at least one credibility signal — a stat, a customer name, or a measurable result.
04
Call-to-Action Quality
Evaluates friction (are you asking for a 30-minute call or a simple yes/no?), clarity (does the reader know exactly what you want?), and singularity (one CTA beats multiple). Low-friction CTAs consistently outperform high-friction ones by 2–3x.
05
Length Optimisation
Counts your word count and checks it against the 50–125 word optimal range for initial cold outreach. Also flags paragraph density and sentences that can be cut without losing meaning. Every unnecessary word reduces response probability.
06
Spam Risk Score
Scans for promotional trigger words, excessive capitalisation, link density, and formatting choices that trip spam filters. Also flags phrases that feel spammy to a human reader even if they pass technical filters — because the prospect's gut reaction matters too.
Cold email grading rubric — what each score means
Every email receives an overall score from 0 to 100. Here's how to interpret your grade — and what the score range means for your expected reply rate:
Score Range
Grade
What it Means
Typical Reply Rate
0 – 40
Poor
Significant structural problems. Usually combines a generic subject line, a self-focused opening ("My name is..."), vague value proposition, and a high-friction CTA. This email is unlikely to generate replies even with excellent targeting and a warm list.
< 2%
41 – 60
Average
Some dimensions work but others pull the score down. A decent subject line undermined by a weak CTA, or a clear value prop buried under too much preamble. These emails perform at industry average. Fixing the bottom one or two dimensions typically pushes the score into the Good range quickly.
3–5%
61 – 80
Good
Well-crafted email that will outperform the average significantly. Strong personalisation, a clear value proposition, and a low-friction CTA. Minor improvements — tightening the subject line or cutting the body to under 100 words — can push this into the Excellent tier. Safe to send at scale.
6–12%
81 – 100
Excellent
Top-tier cold email. Every dimension is working: the subject line creates genuine curiosity, the opening hook references something specific and real, the value prop names a concrete measurable outcome, and the CTA asks for a small, easy-to-say-yes-to commitment. Emails in this range generate significantly above-average reply rates when paired with good targeting.
12–22%
Example: a graded cold email
Here's a real cold email run through the checker, with inline grade callouts on each key element. This email scored 78/100 — Good, but with clear room to push into Excellent.
78
out of 100
Good — nearly there
Strong personalisation and value prop. CTA and subject line have room to improve. Fix those two to reach 85+.
Subject: Helping Vercel-scale teams cut deploy time — worth 2 mins? Subject · 18/25
To: Head of Engineering · Series B SaaS · 80 employees
Hi Marcus, Opening · 14/15
Saw Meridian just pushed your third infrastructure update this month — you're clearly scaling fast on the backend side. Personalisation · 9/10 — specific trigger event referenced
Teams at your growth stage usually hit a wall where CI/CD pipelines become the bottleneck before the product does. Value Prop · 12/15 — relevant problem, but no metric yet Buildkite customers at similar scale reduced median deploy time by 62% in the first 90 days.
Would it be worth a quick 15-minute call next week to walk through how that would apply to your stack? CTA · 10/15 — 15 mins is medium-friction; a lower-ask alternative would score higher
— Priya Length · 87 words · 13/15
18/25
Subject Line
14/15
Opening Hook
9/10
Personalisation
12/15
Value Prop
10/15
CTA Quality
13/15
Length
To push this email from 78 to 85+: (1) Make the subject line more specific — "62% faster deploys for Vercel-scale teams" is more concrete than the current version. (2) Replace the 15-minute call CTA with something lower-friction: "Worth sending over a one-pager on how it works at your scale?" These two changes alone would likely move the score into the Excellent tier.
What makes a good cold email?
Good cold emails share four qualities that the vast majority of outreach in the wild gets wrong. Understanding these principles helps you write better emails from scratch — and debug existing ones faster.
Genuine personalisation
Inserting a prospect's name and company into a template is not personalisation. Genuine personalisation demonstrates that you did actual research: you noticed a job posting that reveals a pain point, read a blog post they published, saw a funding announcement, or identified a technology they use. This kind of specificity is what separates emails that get 15% reply rates from those that get 2%. It doesn't have to be elaborate — one sentence that references something real is enough to change how the whole email reads.
Radical brevity
The optimal length for a cold email is 50 to 125 words. Every word beyond that reduces the chance the whole email gets read. Decision-makers receive dozens of cold emails a week; they skim. If your value proposition isn't visible in the first five seconds of scanning, it might as well not be there. Write like you're sending a text message to a busy person, not drafting a business proposal. Cut every sentence that doesn't directly advance the reader toward your CTA.
A clear, low-friction CTA
The most common CTA mistake in cold email is asking for too much too soon. Requesting a 30-minute demo from someone who has never heard of you requires a large leap of trust. Asking "does this sound relevant to you?" or "worth a quick look?" requires almost none. The goal of the first email is not to close a deal — it's to get a reply. Once you have a reply, you can have a conversation. Once you have a conversation, you can earn a call. Design your CTA around what requires the minimum commitment to say yes.
A specific, credible value proposition
Vague value propositions — "we help companies grow faster" or "our platform drives results" — are indistinguishable from the other 40 emails in the prospect's inbox. Specific, credible value propositions name a concrete outcome, anchor it to a real number, and attribute it to a recognisable customer or circumstance. "We reduced average sales cycle from 74 days to 41 days for SaaS teams over 50 reps" is 100 times more compelling than "we help close deals faster." Specificity is credibility — it shows you've done this before and measured it.
Frequently asked questions
What does the cold email checker score?
The cold email checker scores your email across six key dimensions: subject line strength (how likely it is to be opened), personalisation depth (how tailored the email feels to the specific recipient), value proposition clarity (how clearly you articulate the outcome for the reader), call-to-action quality (how easy it is to say yes to your ask), email length optimisation (whether your word count is in the proven 50–125 word sweet spot), and spam risk (whether any language or formatting patterns could hurt deliverability or read as spammy to a human). Each dimension contributes to your overall score out of 100.
How is the email grade calculated?
The grade is calculated using a weighted scoring model trained on response data from over 300 million cold emails. Each of the six dimensions carries a different weight based on its empirical impact on reply rates — subject line and personalisation carry more weight because they determine whether the email is opened and whether the reader feels it's relevant to them specifically. The six dimension scores are combined into an overall score from 0 to 100, which maps to a grade: 0–40 is Poor, 41–60 is Average, 61–80 is Good, and 81–100 is Excellent.
Is the cold email checker really free?
Yes, completely free. No credit card, no signup, and no email address required to get your first score. Paste your email, hit check, and see your grade in seconds. Free users get unlimited email scoring — check as many emails as you like. Paid plans (Starter at €29/month, Pro at €79/month) add AI-powered rewrite suggestions that show you a corrected version of your email addressing every flagged weakness, along with access to 28 buyer persona simulations. See the pricing page for a full comparison.
Can I check LinkedIn InMails too?
Yes. While ReplyRate is designed primarily for cold email, the scoring dimensions apply equally well to LinkedIn InMail outreach. Subject line strength, opening hook, personalisation depth, value proposition clarity, CTA strength, and length are all relevant to InMail. Simply paste your InMail subject and body into the checker. One note: LinkedIn's character limits and the platform's professional context mean that even shorter messages (40–80 words) often perform better than the standard cold email optimal range, and the AI feedback will reflect this.
What score should I aim for?
Aim for a score of 70 or above before sending any cold email at scale. Emails that score 70–80 are well-crafted and will significantly outperform the average untested cold email. Emails that score 80 or above are excellent — the kind of messages that generate 10–20% reply rates in the right circumstances. The average cold email sent without checking or optimisation scores between 40 and 55, which aligns with the industry-average reply rate of 3–5%. If your email scores below 60, use the dimension-level feedback to fix the one or two issues pulling your score down before sending.
How often should I check my emails?
Check every new email template before you add it to a sequence, and re-check whenever you make significant edits. For ongoing sequences, run a check any time your reply rate drops below your baseline — the checker quickly diagnoses whether the issue is structural (subject line, CTA, length) rather than a targeting or timing problem. Since scoring is unlimited and free, there's no reason not to check every variation. The most effective workflow: draft your email, check it, fix the top flagged dimension, check again, and only add to a sequence once you've crossed 70. Many users report this habit alone — checking before sending — doubled their reply rates within the first month.