Typing Speed Test

Measure your typing speed in words per minute. Start typing to begin the timer. Accuracy counts.

Text in:

—WPM
—Accuracy
0.0sTime
—Best

When you code for a living, your keyboard becomes an extension of your thinking. A slow typist has a delay between thought and output, while a fast typist thinks in sentences that materialize as they form. Practice accuracy before speed — errors cost more than delays.

Click the text above and start typing to begin.

How the Typing Speed Test Works

Choose Short, Medium, or Long, then start typing — the timer starts on your first keystroke. Correct characters turn green, errors turn red.

When you finish the passage, results are locked in: WPM, Accuracy, and Time. WPM uses the standard formula: characters typed ÷ 5 ÷ minutes elapsed.

Understanding Typing Speed

  • 40–45 WPM — casual typist: Average for someone who types regularly but has never formally practised.
  • 60–75 WPM — proficient typist: Most office and developer roles. At this speed, typing rarely slows down your thinking.
  • 80–100+ WPM — professional typist: Achievable with dedicated touch-typing practice over several months.
  • Touch typing vs. hunt-and-peck: Touch typists consistently hit roughly double the speed of hunt-and-peck typists over long sessions, with lower fatigue and fewer errors.

Tips to Improve Your Typing Speed

  • Prioritise accuracy over speed. Reinforcing sloppy habits at high speed is harder to undo than building clean ones from the start. Hit zero errors at a comfortable pace, then raise the target. Speed follows naturally.
  • Don't look at the keyboard. Cover the keys with a cloth if you have to. The discomfort is temporary; the speed gains are permanent once the habit forms.
  • Use all 10 fingers, including pinkies. Pinkies handle Shift, Enter, Backspace, and outermost letters — neglecting them forces hand contortions that cap your ceiling.
  • Practice 15–20 minutes daily. Motor skills consolidate during sleep. Short daily sessions beat long occasional ones.

For the person who finally wants to see if practice is actually working

The test tracks four stats per session: WPM, accuracy, elapsed time, and your personal best. Each result is saved locally in your browser and plotted in a bar chart of your last 20 sessions — so you can actually see whether two weeks of daily practice moved the needle, or whether you've plateaued at 62 WPM for the third month in a row. No account required. The history lives in localStorage and goes nowhere.

Custom paste mode lets you test on your own writing — paste an email you're about to send, a paragraph from your thesis, or code from your last pull request. The texts you practice most on will reflect your real-world vocabulary better than generic word lists. English and French sample texts are both available if you switch languages. The personal-best celebration triggers only when you genuinely beat your previous high — not every session.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's considered a good typing speed?
60 WPM is solid for most roles. Below 40 WPM, typing is slow enough to break your train of thought while writing or coding. Developers and writers get the most out of pushing into the 70–90 WPM range.
Does accuracy matter as much as raw speed?
Often more. 80 WPM at 90% accuracy produces more usable output than 90 WPM at 75%, because errors eat correction time. Aim for 95%+ accuracy before chasing higher speeds.
How is WPM calculated?
WPM = (characters typed ÷ 5) ÷ minutes elapsed. Standardising a "word" at 5 characters keeps results comparable across different passages regardless of word length.

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