Typing Speed Test — Measure Your WPM and Accuracy
This typing speed test measures your WPM and accuracy live and scores you the moment the timer stops. Pick 15, 30, 60 or 120 seconds, type the passage, and watch correct characters, mistakes, words per minute and your rating band update as you go. Nothing is uploaded and no account is needed — retake it as often as you like.
How typing speed is measured
WPM means words per minute, and in every standardised typing speed test a "word" is five characters including the space — not an actual English word. The formula is (correct characters ÷ 5) ÷ minutes elapsed, so keyboard counts as 1.8 words.
The convention dates to typewriter speed contests in the early 1900s and keeps scores comparable: counting real words would let short function words outscore legal or medical text at identical finger speed.
This test counts correct characters only, so the figure you see is net WPM — a mistyped character never adds to your score, and the seconds spent typing it still count against you. Accuracy is reported separately, as correct characters divided by everything you entered, which is why you finish with something like 68 WPM at 91% rather than one blended number.
What this test cannot tell you
A browser test measures how fast you reproduce a passage already in front of you. It does not measure composition speed — writing your own sentences runs 30–50% slower, because you are thinking and typing at once. It also cannot separate your fingers from your hardware: a chattering switch or dropped keystroke shows up as an accuracy problem that looks like your fault. If a score seems wrong, run the keyboard tester once to confirm every key registers exactly once.
What is a good WPM
About 40 WPM is average for an adult, 60–70 is comfortably above average, and a sustained 90+ puts you among the minority who type for a living. Under 30 usually means you are still hunting for keys with a few fingers rather than touch typing — the single biggest gain available to you.
Results here fall into five bands: under 30 Beginner, 30–49 Average, 50–74 Proficient, 75–99 Professional, 100 or more Speed Demon. Treat them as a rough map, not a certificate.
Age and job change what "good" means. School-age typists commonly land between 25 and 45 WPM; office workers who type all day drift into the 50s and 60s without practising deliberately; transcriptionists and court reporters live above 100. Programmers are the exception — most sit at 50–70 and gain little from going faster, because thinking, not typing, is the bottleneck.
If what you want is raw finger speed on one or two keys for a rhythm game, that is a different skill — the keyboard cps test measures it, and it correlates poorly with prose speed.
How long the test should be: 15, 30, 60 or 120 seconds
Use 60 seconds as your default. One minute averages out a lucky or unlucky start without letting concentration drift, and it is the duration people mean when they quote their WPM.
The 15-second run flatters almost everyone: you sprint, you never tire, and one clean burst can read 10–20 WPM above your real pace. The 120-second run is the honest one — it exposes stamina, and the gap between your 15- and 120-second scores shows how much of your speed is adrenaline.
Traditional 1-, 3- and 5-minute tests exist because certifications and civil-service exams are scored that way. Preparing for one? Use the longest duration here and expect the exam to come in slightly lower, since its passages add punctuation, capitals and numbers. Record the median of three runs, not your best — the median is what you can repeat.
Accuracy vs raw WPM
Accuracy matters more, because every error costs more time than the speed that caused it saved. Noticing a mistyped word, backspacing and retyping burns one to two seconds — roughly what five correct words cost. Below about 95% accuracy you spend more of the minute repairing than producing.
Raw WPM (gross WPM) counts every character you typed, errors included. Net WPM counts only the correct ones. This typing speed test reports net WPM, so a fast, sloppy run scores lower here than on a site showing raw speed. That is deliberate: net is the number exams and employers care about.
It is also why the same person scores differently on different sites. Some count only uncorrected errors; some penalise every backspace even when the final text is clean; some strip punctuation and capitals from the passage. A 10–20 WPM spread between two tests usually says nothing about your typing and everything about their scoring rules — track your history on one test instead. CPM, characters per minute, is the same measurement without the division by five: multiply WPM by five to convert.
Typing tests in other languages
The interface runs in 24 languages, so instructions, timer and results appear in the language you think in — reading an English results screen under time pressure adds a tax that has nothing to do with your typing.
Three East Asian languages get dedicated handling. Japanese, Korean and Traditional Chinese use their own passages and report CPM instead of WPM, because a five-character "word" is meaningless in scripts where one character can be a whole word. Input-method composition is handled too, so the buffering an IME does while you convert kana or pinyin is not counted as a burst of errors.
Honest limit: the other interface languages currently present the English passage. Finger placement and rhythm transfer, but you are not drilling your own language's vocabulary or diacritics, so a Vietnamese, Bengali or Hindi run here is not directly comparable to a native-language test.
How to type faster
Slow down first. The fastest route from 40 to 70 WPM is typing at 80% of your top speed until accuracy sits above 97%, then letting speed return on its own — practising faster than you can control only rehearses the errors.
Four things move the number, roughly in order of effect: use the home row and give every key a fixed finger; stop looking at the keyboard, even though week one feels slower (this alone takes most people from the 30s to the 50s); practise ten to fifteen minutes daily instead of an hour on Sunday; and drill the letter pairs that trip you up.
Expect a plateau between 60 and 80 WPM lasting weeks, not days. Zero to a usable 40 WPM takes one to three months of daily practice; 40 to 80 is measured in months.
Look at hardware last, but do look — key travel, switch weight and a cramped laptop layout change your rhythm, and a switch that double-fires caps your accuracy however well you type. On a MacBook, run the mac keyboard test before blaming your fingers.
Frequently asked questions
What is considered a good typing speed?
Anything above 40 WPM is good for everyday use, and 60–70 WPM is comfortably above average. Most adults sit around 40; professional typists work at 65–75 with 95%+ accuracy; above 100 WPM is rare outside transcription and competitive typing. Speed without accuracy does not count — 50 WPM at 98% is worth more in practice than 65 WPM at 85%, because you spend the difference fixing errors.
What is the average typing speed of an adult?
Around 40 WPM. Published averages cluster between 38 and 43 WPM for adults typing normal prose, with a median near 38. School-age typists usually land between 25 and 45. Office workers who type daily drift into the 50s and 60s without deliberate practice, and roles built around typing — data entry, transcription, court reporting — expect 65 WPM and up. Hunt-and-peck typists typically stay under 30.
How is typing speed calculated, and do mistakes affect it?
Yes, mistakes lower your score here. WPM is (correct characters ÷ 5) ÷ minutes, where five characters counts as one word regardless of the real words in the passage. Because only correct characters count, this test reports net WPM: typing fast and wrong produces a lower number, not a higher one. Errors you fix still cost you the seconds spent backspacing, so accuracy shows up twice.
Why do I get a different WPM on different typing test websites?
Because the sites score differently, not because your typing changed. Some report raw WPM counting every keystroke; others report net WPM counting only correct characters. Some penalise every corrected error, others only errors left in the final text. Passages differ too — stripping punctuation, capitals and numbers is worth 10–20 WPM to most typists. Track your progress on one test rather than comparing scores across sites.
What is the minimum typing speed required by most employers?
40 WPM is the usual floor for any job that lists a typing requirement. General office and admin roles are often satisfied by 35–45 WPM; dedicated data-entry work commonly asks for 45–60 WPM with 95%+ accuracy; transcription and legal or medical typing want 65–90. Most employers test accuracy alongside speed and will take 45 WPM at 98% over 60 WPM at 88% every time.
How long does it take to reach 40 WPM if I have never touch typed?
One to three months at 15–20 minutes of daily practice. The first two weeks feel slower than hunt-and-peck because you are learning finger assignments; most people pass their old speed around week three and reach a usable 40 WPM inside two months. Going from 40 to 70 takes considerably longer — think several months of consistent practice, not weeks, with a plateau somewhere in the 60s.
Can you be too old to learn touch typing?
No. Touch typing is motor learning, and adults pick it up fine — the limit is practice time, not age. Expect a slower start than a teenager and a top speed maybe 10–20% lower if you are learning in your sixties or seventies, but the jump from hunt-and-peck to touch typing is worth more than raw ceiling: 20–25 WPM to 45–55 WPM is a normal outcome.