Free ATS resume checker
Upload your resume or CV and, ideally, the job ad. We extract your file the way an applicant tracking system does, then show you exactly what it read, what broke, and which keywords are missing.
Drop your CV or click to browse
PDF or DOCX · up to 10 MB · takes under a minute
Encrypted and never used to train AI.
What the checker tests
Every check runs on the text a parser actually pulls out of your file, not on how the page looks.
Parsing
Is the text machine-readable? Do columns, tables, text boxes or letter-spaced headings scramble it? Do icons come out as garbage characters?
Structure
Can a parser find your email, phone, standard section headings and consistently formatted dates?
Content
How many bullets show a measurable result, and how many lean on passive "responsible for" phrasing?
Keywords
Paste a job ad and we pull out the skills and tools it screens for, then show which ones your CV covers and which are missing.
Then fix it in one step
The same upload produces a rewritten CV in one of four ATS-tested templates. We re-parse the new PDF with the same checks so you can compare the scores before you pay anything.
What an ATS score can and can't tell you
No checker can reproduce an employer's private ranking settings. What it can do is show whether your file survives parsing and whether the words recruiters search for are present. Those two failures are fixable, and they are the ones this tool targets.
ATS checker questions
How do I check if my resume is ATS friendly?+
Upload it here. We extract the text with the same kind of PDF and Word parsing ATS platforms rely on, show you what came out, and flag the failures that matter: unreadable or scrambled text, contact details a parser can't find, unrecognised section headings, inconsistent dates and, if you paste the job ad, missing keywords.
What is a good ATS score?+
There is no industry-standard ATS score. Workday, Greenhouse, iCIMS and other systems don't show candidates a percentage, and employers configure their own filters. Our number is cvmakeover's readiness score: the share of the checks listed in your report that your file passes. Fix every failed parsing and structure check first, then cover the job's required keywords that genuinely apply to you.
Can ChatGPT check my resume's ATS score?+
A chatbot can comment on your wording, but it reads the text you paste, not the file you send. Most ATS problems live in the file itself: columns, tables, letter-spaced headings, icons and text in images. This checker parses the actual file, so it catches those.
Does an ATS read PDF or DOCX better?+
Mainstream ATS read both, provided the file contains real text in a simple layout. Image-only PDFs, layout tables and text boxes are what fail. The report tells you which of those your file has, and the fixed CV comes as both PDF and editable Word.
Why is my resume getting rejected by ATS?+
Often it isn't rejected by the software at all: the parser extracts it badly, so your experience lands in the wrong fields or a recruiter's keyword search doesn't find you. Scrambled reading order, contact details in a header or image, and missing job-ad keywords are the usual causes, and each one shows up as a check in the report.