ATS Format Checker
Spot the formatting risks most likely to trip up an ATS parser — before a recruiter ever opens your resume.
Drag & drop your resume here
or browse files — PDF or DOCX, up to 5 MB
🔒 Your CV is processed entirely in your browser. It is not uploaded or stored on our servers.
Paste the job posting to score your resume against it specifically. Leave blank for a general ATS check.
Potential ATS formatting issues we check for
- • Very little extractable text (often a sign of an image-based or overly graphic-heavy document)
- • Excessive special characters, which can confuse text parsers
- • Excessive uppercase text instead of standard sentence case
- • Missing bullet-style structure for achievements
- • Very long, unbroken paragraphs
- • Repeated content, often caused by headers or footers repeating on every page
- • Sections that don't appear clearly separated by headings
What we deliberately don't claim
Because analysis happens on extracted text rather than the original document layout, this tool does not claim to precisely detect columns, tables, headers, footers, or text boxes. Different ATS platforms also parse the same document differently — a formatting choice that's fine for one system may cause problems in another.
This ATS score is an estimate based on common applicant-tracking-system practices. Actual results may vary between employers and ATS platforms.
Frequently asked questions
Can this detect tables, columns, or text boxes directly?
Not directly. The browser only has access to the text an extraction library (PDF.js or Mammoth.js) pulls out, not the original visual layout, so we don't claim exact detection of columns, tables, headers, or footers.
So what formatting issues can it actually detect?
Text-shape signals that often correlate with layout problems: very little extractable text, missing bullet structure, excessive special characters, excessive uppercase, very long paragraphs, and repeated content (like a header repeated on every page).
What does 'image-only PDF' mean?
Some PDFs — especially scanned documents — contain no extractable text at all, just an image of a page. If we detect this, you'll be asked to upload a text-based PDF or a DOCX file instead, since OCR isn't supported yet.
Is a DOCX safer than a PDF for ATS parsing?
Often yes, since DOCX text tends to extract more predictably — but a poorly structured DOCX (heavy use of tables or text boxes) can still cause the same problems as a PDF.