FREE TOOL

WCAG Color Contrast Checker

Pick any two colors and get the exact WCAG 2.1 contrast ratio with instant pass/fail for AA and AAA. Everything runs in your browser — nothing is uploaded.

Check a color pair

WCAG contrast requirements by text size
ContentRequired ratioAAAAA
Normal text (< 18pt / < 14pt bold)4.5 : 1
Large text (≥ 18pt or ≥ 14pt bold)3 : 1
UI components & graphical objects3 : 1n/a

Ratios follow WCAG 2.1 success criteria 1.4.3 (Contrast Minimum), 1.4.6 (Contrast Enhanced) and 1.4.11 (Non-text Contrast). Fixing failures site-wide? The free Accessibility Scanner finds low-contrast text on a whole page.

How the ratio is calculated

Each color is converted to sRGB relative luminance (L = 0.2126·R + 0.7152·G + 0.0722·B after gamma expansion). The contrast ratio is (L1 + 0.05) / (L2 + 0.05), where L1 is the lighter color. A ratio of 1:1 means identical colors; 21:1 is the maximum (black on white). This matches the formula in the WCAG specification exactly.

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