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Podscore

The caption rubric

Podscore grades an Instagram caption out of 100 against five fixed components. The rules are hard and opinionated on purpose — a rubric you can argue with is more useful than a score you cannot check.

Structure a paragraph runs over 3 lines 20 / 25
Call to action weak ask 10 / 20
Length & depth under 1,200 characters caps this at 5 2 / 15
Hashtag hygiene 7 tags — over the limit of 5 0 / 10
32 of 70 gradeable

Why 70 and not 100. Four of the five components are deterministic rules that run fine in a browser. The fifth — Hook & Keywords, worth 30 points — needs a language model to judge whether an opening line actually earns attention. Rather than guess at it and report a number that looks like the real thing, this page withholds it and says so.

Every deduction rule

Hook & Keywords

30 points

Needs the model — not graded on this page

  • 0–10 for a boring opener with no keywords.
  • 11–20 for a good hook that misses the keywords.
  • 21–30 for an excellent hook with keywords integrated naturally.
  • Never open with "Hey guys".

Structure

25 points
  • Deduct 5 points for every paragraph longer than 3 lines.
  • Deduct 10 points if the whole caption is a single block of text.

Call to action

20 points
  • 0 for no call to action at all.
  • 10 for a weak one — "Thoughts?", "Let me know".
  • 20 for a specific one — "Save this for later", "Send this to someone who needs it".

Length & depth

15 points
  • Under 100 characters must score 0.
  • Under 1,200 characters is capped at 5.
  • Full marks require 1,200 characters or more.

Hashtag hygiene

10 points
  • 0 if there are no hashtags.
  • 0 if there are more than 5.
  • Full marks for exactly 5 niche-specific tags.
  • Generic tags such as #love or #viral are penalised.

Podscore runs over your latest 12 posts inside the app, alongside caption version history so you can A/B a rewrite against real engagement. See how PodSwap works.