The behaviour of metal powders when they are spread into thin layers is critical for powder bed additive manufacturing and other processes. However, there is no accepted test procedure to quantify this behaviour. There is not even an accepted metric that can be used to assess this property. This increases the difficulty of developing new powders for additive manufacturing. The current study proposes test and analysis procedures that minimise the influence of operators and are aimed at providing maximum repeatability and reproducibility while minimising the need for specialist analysis equipment. Initial testing shows that a powder with good flow properties behaves as expected as a function of recoater speeds and always exhibits superior spread metrics to powders with poor flow properties. This provides an important step towards the establishment of a robust, inexpensive test that can help additive manufacturing to grow in new industries.