At One Place

Typing speed test

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Measure words per minute and accuracy on a one, two or five minute test.

How it works

Type the passage shown and this measures your speed in words per minute and your accuracy. Nothing is recorded or uploaded — the timer and the scoring both run in your browser.

A word is defined as five characters including spaces, which is the standard convention and the reason WPM figures are comparable at all. Counting actual words would make the score depend on vocabulary — a passage of short words would inflate it — so the five-character unit removes that.

Two figures are reported, and the second matters more. Gross WPM is everything you typed; net WPM subtracts errors. A fast typist with poor accuracy is slower in practice than the gross figure suggests, because fixing mistakes costs more time than typing carefully would have.

Typical ranges: around 40 WPM is average for an adult, 65 to 75 is a competent touch typist, and professional transcription work generally expects 80 or more. Sustained speeds above about 120 are rare.

This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent to a server, logged or stored, and the page keeps working with the network disconnected.

Common questions

What is a good typing speed?
Around 40 WPM is average for adults. 65–75 is a competent touch typist, and transcription work generally expects 80 or more.
How is WPM calculated?
Characters typed divided by five, divided by minutes elapsed. Five characters is the standard definition of a word, so scores stay comparable across passages.
What is the difference between gross and net WPM?
Gross counts everything typed; net subtracts errors. Net is the realistic figure, because correcting mistakes costs more time than typing accurately would have.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place

How these figures are compiled and checked