Restaurant Inspection Score Reader: What a Health Score Means

Enter a restaurant’s inspection score or grade, pick the health department, and this tool explains what that number means under that office’s own rules: which band it falls in, whether it points to serious violations, and what to look at in the full report. US scoring systems run in opposite directions, so a 90 can be excellent in one county and a 9 can be excellent in another.

Restaurant Inspection Check tool · rules checked October 21–23, 2026

Inspection score reader

Pick the program that inspected the restaurant, then enter what the report or door sign shows. The reader explains it on that agency's own scale and tells you what usually happens next.

Runs in your browser; nothing you enter is sent or saved. It reads the published rules only. It cannot see the actual report, and a score describes one visit, not the restaurant today.

How to read the result

  1. Use the score from the official report, not from a review site, and note the inspection date.
  2. Check the inspection type. In our count of a year of Chicago inspections, complaint-driven visits failed 36% of the time against 22% for routine restaurant visits.
  3. Look for the follow-up. In New York City, 61% of restaurants that missed an A on the first visit scored in the A range when re-inspected, so the letter on the door is often the second visit’s result.

Both figures come from our own analysis of official open data: NYC grades and Chicago results. For a side-by-side of scoring systems, see Restaurant Health Score and Grade: Read Violations and Follow-Up.

Local guides for each health department

Related: food handler card requirements by state, for the training staff need before an inspector asks.

To see how a score compares with a year of inspections in LA County, Austin and New York City, read what is a good health inspection score.

The tool interprets a score you already have; it does not look up a restaurant. Health departments change their forms and cutoffs, so confirm anything important on the official site.