Typing Speed Test

What this typing speed test does

This test measures three things while you copy a real English passage: your words per minute, your accuracy, and your consistency. The passage appears in the box; you type it in the area below; the letters you get right turn green and the mistakes turn red as you go, so there are no surprises at the end. The clock starts with your first keystroke — never before you are ready — and when the time runs out (or you finish the passage early), your final score appears with a breakdown: net speed after errors, gross speed before them, and how many characters you typed correctly. The default test is one minute, the length most employers and typing courses use, but you can switch to a 30-second sprint or a sterner 5-minute test with the buttons above; dedicated pages for the 30-second and 5-minute tests are linked at the bottom of this page too.

The passages are original texts written for this site — short scenes about trains, gardens, ferries, libraries and lighthouses, in ordinary English with normal punctuation and capital letters. That choice is deliberate. Tests built from random disconnected words flatter your score, because real typing is sentences: capital letters at the starts, commas where your fingers must hesitate, words of every length in their natural order. A score earned on real prose is a score you can trust — and compare honestly against the benchmarks below.

How WPM is calculated

Typing speed uses a convention over a century old: one "word" is defined as five characters, because the average English word is about that long once you count the space after it. Your net WPM — the headline number — takes only the characters you typed correctly, divides by five, and divides by the minutes spent. Your gross WPM counts every character, right or wrong. The gap between the two is the tax your mistakes levy: a typist at 60 gross WPM and 90% accuracy really works at about 54 WPM, and the backspacing and re-reading cost more still. This is why every honest typing teacher gives the same unfashionable advice — slow down a touch, type it right the first time, and let speed follow accuracy rather than chase it.

What is a good score?

• Under 25 WPM — hunt-and-peck territory. Very common, and very fixable: a few weeks of short daily practice on form (fingers on the home row, eyes on the screen) transforms it.
• 30–45 WPM — the average adult range. Perfectly serviceable for email and everyday writing.
• 50–65 WPM — a genuinely good office speed; most jobs that mention typing at all ask for something in this band.
• 70–90 WPM — fast. Data entry, transcription and executive-assistant roles live here.
• Over 90 WPM — professional grade. Court reporters and champion typists go far beyond it, but anything past 90 puts you ahead of nearly everyone you will ever work with.

Whatever your number, judge it alongside accuracy: 55 WPM at 97% is worth more, in any real job, than 65 WPM at 88%. And judge consistency too — the fourth stat on this test. It compares your typing rate second by second; steady typists score in the 90s. Bursty typing usually means your eyes are bouncing between keyboard and screen. The cure is the same unglamorous one: home row, eyes up, ten quiet minutes a day.

Private by design: the test runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is recorded, uploaded or stored — close the tab and it is gone.