Words per minute calculator
Enter how many words and how long it took, or paste the text, to get words per minute for speaking, reading or typing. Teachers can work out words correct per minute for a reading fluency check and compare it with grade norms.
Words per minute
–
Enter the word count and the time.
The calculator runs in your browser, and anything you paste is never sent anywhere.
How words per minute is worked out
Need to know how long a speech will take instead? Use the speaking time calculator. To measure yourself, take the typing speed test or the reading speed test.
- Speaking and reading
- The words divided by the minutes. 450 words in 3 minutes is 150 words per minute. Minutes and seconds are added together first, so 2 minutes 30 seconds counts as 2.5 minutes.
- Typing
- Every 5 characters count as one word, spaces and punctuation included, the standard most typing tests use. 1,250 characters in 5 minutes is 50 gross words per minute. Net WPM takes off one word per minute for each error left uncorrected: 10 errors in those 5 minutes make it 48.
- Reading fluency (WCPM)
- The words read aloud minus the errors, divided by the minutes. A student who reads 96 words in one minute with 7 errors scores 89 words correct per minute, with 93 percent accuracy. Errors are words misread or mispronounced, left out, read out of order, or supplied by the teacher after a 3-second pause.
- Words in pasted text
- Anything between spaces that contains a letter or a number. Hyphenated words count once, and stray punctuation doesn't count. For typing, every character counts, spaces and line breaks included.
Average words per minute
Adults reading, speaking and typing in English, in words per minute.
| Activity | Average | Usual range |
|---|---|---|
| Silent reading, fiction | 260 | – |
| Silent reading, non-fiction | 238 | 175 to 300 |
| Reading aloud | 183 | – |
| Speaking, conversation and most talks | 150 | 130 to 170 |
| Typing, people who take online tests | 52 | – |
| Typing, the figure usually quoted | 40 | – |
Reading figures are from Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review of 190 reading studies with 18,573 participants, published in the Journal of Memory and Language. The 52 words per minute for typing is the average from Aalto University's 2018 study of 168,000 people who took an online typing test. The speaking range runs from a slow, deliberate talk to a fast, energetic speaker.
Reading fluency norms by grade
The median words correct per minute for students in grades 1 to 6, at the start, middle and end of the school year.
| Grade | Fall | Winter | Spring |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | – | 29 | 60 |
| 2 | 50 | 84 | 100 |
| 3 | 83 | 97 | 112 |
| 4 | 94 | 120 | 133 |
| 5 | 121 | 133 | 146 |
| 6 | 132 | 145 | 146 |
From Jan Hasbrouck and Gerald Tindal's 2017 compiled oral reading fluency norms (Technical Report 1702, Behavioral Research and Teaching, University of Oregon), built from scores on DIBELS 6th Edition, DIBELS Next and easyCBM. The report has no fall score for grade 1. Choose a grade and a time of year in the calculator to see where a score falls between the 10th and 90th percentiles.
Common questions
- How do you calculate words per minute?
- Divide the number of words by the time in minutes. 450 words in 3 minutes is 150 words per minute. Turn seconds into part of a minute first: 2 minutes 30 seconds is 2.5 minutes, so 300 words in that time is 120 words per minute.
- How is typing speed in WPM calculated?
- Typing tests count every 5 characters as one word, spaces and punctuation included, so long and short words count the same. Divide the characters by 5, then by the minutes, for gross WPM: 1,250 characters in 5 minutes is 50 WPM. Net WPM takes off one word per minute for each error left uncorrected, so 10 errors over those 5 minutes give 48 net WPM.
- What is WCPM?
- Words correct per minute, the usual score for oral reading fluency in schools. A student reads an unpracticed passage aloud for one minute while the teacher marks errors: words misread or mispronounced, left out, read out of order, or supplied by the teacher after a 3-second pause. The score is the words read minus the errors. If the reading took more or less than a minute, divide the words read correctly by the minutes.
- What is a good WCPM score?
- It depends on the grade and the time of year. In Jan Hasbrouck and Gerald Tindal's 2017 compiled norms, the median spring score is 60 WCPM in grade 1, 100 in grade 2, 112 in grade 3, 133 in grade 4, and 146 in grades 5 and 6. The report says students below the norm for their grade may be at risk of reading difficulties and are good candidates for further assessment.
- What is the average words per minute?
- It depends on what you are doing. Adults read non-fiction silently at about 238 words per minute, fiction at about 260, and read aloud at about 183, according to Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review of 190 reading studies. Conversation runs at about 150. Typing is the slowest: about 40 words per minute is the figure usually quoted, and people who took an online typing test averaged 52 in a 2018 Aalto University study of 168,000 typists.
- How do I measure my own words per minute?
- Time yourself on text you can count. Press Start timer above, then talk, read or type, and press Stop timer to fill in the time. For a speech, count the words in your script. The typing speed test and the reading speed test on this site time you and count the words for you.
- Is speaking faster than typing?
- Yes, for almost everyone. At 150 words per minute, saying a 600-word email takes 4 minutes. Typing it at 40 words per minute takes 15, before any corrections. That gap is why dictating saves so much time on writing.
Write at the speed you talk
Most people speak at about 150 words per minute and type at about 40. Dictation Daddy turns your speech into punctuated text in any app. Try it in your browser, then download it for Mac, Windows, Android or Chrome.
Runs in your browser. No download or signup to try it.