Typing Speed Test

When to use this

You want to know where you actually stand. Maybe you are applying for a job that lists "60+ WPM" as a requirement. Maybe you have been practicing touch typing for a month and want to see if it is paying off. Or maybe you just got a new keyboard and want to see how it feels at speed. A typing test gives you a number you can track over time — and that number is more useful than you might think.

Take the test at the start of a practice session to establish your baseline, then again at the end. Most people see a 10-15% improvement just from warming up, which tells you something important: your "true" speed is closer to your warmed-up score than your cold start. If you are preparing for a typing requirement, test yourself after a 5-minute warm-up to get the score that reflects your actual ability.

The performance chart shows measured WPM and raw WPM over the test. Final accuracy evaluates correct, substituted, extra, and missed characters in each reached word; current partial progress is included when time expires.

Good to know

About 50 WPM is the middle of the pack. In a published study of 168,960 people typing English sentences on keyboards (Dhakal et al., CHI 2018), the average was 51.6 WPM and the median about 50. At 60 WPM you are faster than roughly 69% of those typists; at 80 WPM, roughly 91%. The results panel on this page uses the same study to estimate your percentile. Volunteers who take typing tests skew toward people practicing their typing, so the general population is likely a little slower.

Accuracy is the speed multiplier. Backspacing to fix errors costs roughly 2x the time of typing the character correctly. A typist at 60 WPM with 98% accuracy produces more correct text per minute than one at 75 WPM with 90% accuracy. If you want to get faster, get more accurate first — the speed follows.

The home row is not optional. Hunt-and-peck typists hit a hard ceiling around 35-40 WPM because their eyes become the bottleneck. Touch typing (fingers on ASDF JKL;, each finger responsible for a column of keys) removes that ceiling entirely. The transition is painful for about two weeks, then your speed starts climbing past where it was before.

Short sessions beat long ones. Fifteen minutes of focused practice daily improves speed faster than a two-hour marathon once a week. Your fingers build muscle memory through repetition across days, not within a single session. Set a daily reminder, do three tests, and move on.

Your keyboard matters (a little). Mechanical keyboards with tactile switches tend to produce slightly higher speeds than mushy membrane boards, mostly because the tactile feedback helps your fingers confirm key presses without bottoming out. But technique matters 10x more than hardware — do not blame the keyboard.

Quick Reference

WPM	Faster than about	Rating on this site
30	13% of typists	Developing
40	30% of typists	Average
60	69% of typists	Fast
70	82% of typists	Fast
80	91% of typists	Very fast
90	96% of typists	Very fast
100	98% of typists	Exceptional
120	more than 99% of typists	Exceptional

Percentiles are estimated from a skew-normal fit to the published mean (51.56 WPM), standard deviation (20.2) and skewness (0.513) of Dhakal et al. (CHI 2018), which reproduces the paper's own markers: the slowest 10% type under about 26 WPM and the fastest 10% over about 78 WPM.