Free typing speed test: type for 15-120 seconds and get your WPM, CPM, and accuracy, with benchmarks from the 136-million-keystroke typing study.
Time left 60 s—Accuracy —
Study rows: Dhakal, Feit, Kristensson & Oulasvirta, CHI 2018 (136M keystrokes, 168,000 volunteers). Requirements: US OPM clerical qualification standards (5-minute sample, 3 errors or fewer); NCRA Registered Professional Reporter certification (95% accuracy required).
| Benchmark | WPM | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Slowest 10% of typists | < 26 | CHI 2018 study |
| Average typist (mean) | 51.56 | CHI 2018 study |
| Fastest 10% of typists | > 78 | CHI 2018 study |
| Fastest typists in the study | 120+ | CHI 2018 study |
| US federal clerk-typist standard | 40 | US OPM |
| Court reporter: literary takedown | 180 | NCRA |
| Court reporter: jury charge | 200 | NCRA |
| Court reporter: testimony | 225 | NCRA |
Results use the standard 5-characters-per-word definition (MacKenzie; Yamada 1980). Accuracy counts every keystroke including corrected ones; net WPM deducts only errors left uncorrected. Benchmarks: Dhakal et al., CHI 2018.
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Take a free typing speed test in 15, 30, 60, or 120 seconds. Type the random stream of common English words; the clock starts on your first keystroke, and nothing stands between you and your score: no sign-up, no interstitial, no certificate upsell. You get net and gross WPM, characters per minute, keystroke accuracy, a second-by-second speed chart, and the worked math behind your own numbers.
A typing speed test measures how fast and how accurately you type, in words per minute (WPM). Because real words vary in length, a 'word' is standardized as any 5 characters, spaces included - a convention dating to early typing competitions (Yamada, 1980) and used in text-entry research ever since (MacKenzie's 'A Note on Calculating Text Entry Speed'). Gross WPM counts everything you typed; net WPM subtracts one word per uncorrected error per minute - the figure this test reports as your headline score. Accuracy is judged per keystroke, the way typing.com, Monkeytype and 10FastFingers all define it: every key press is scored the moment you press it, so fixing a mistake improves your text but the mistake still counts.
Formula
US federal clerk-typist and office-automation positions require 40 WPM under OPM qualification standards; many private data-entry roles screen with a timed test.
NCRA's Registered Professional Reporter certification requires 180-225 WPM at 95% accuracy on five-minute takes - the far end of the scale on this page.
A repeatable 60-second test with keystroke accuracy is the cleanest way to track weekly progress while learning to type.
Anyone who types for a living can check where they sit against the measured average of 51.56 WPM and the 78 WPM top-decile line.
The average here is not folklore: 51.56 WPM comes from the 136-million-keystroke Aalto/Cambridge study of 168,000 typists (CHI 2018). Job anchors come from US OPM qualification standards (40 WPM for clerk-typist roles) and NCRA court-reporter certification (up to 225 WPM at 95% accuracy).
After the test, every step of the calculation is shown with your numbers: standard words, gross WPM, the error deduction, keystroke accuracy, and CPM. No other mainstream typing test shows its work.
Words are drawn from the 300 most common English words in a public frequency corpus, so the test measures typing - not vocabulary - and never repeats a memorizable passage.
No account, no ad interstitial, no 'reveal your result' button. The result renders the instant the timer ends, with a per-second chart of your speed.
52 words per minute. In the largest typing study to date - 136 million keystrokes from 168,000 volunteers, analysed by Aalto University and the University of Cambridge (Dhakal et al., CHI 2018) - the average was 51.56 WPM. The often-quoted '40 WPM average' predates modern large-scale data and has no published primary source.
Above 52 WPM beats the measured average; above 78 WPM puts you in the fastest 10% of typists (that group averaged 89.6 WPM). For employment, 40 WPM satisfies the US federal clerk-typist standard, and the fastest typists in the study exceeded 120 WPM.
Every 5 characters - spaces included - count as one word. Gross WPM = (all characters typed ÷ 5) ÷ minutes. Net WPM = gross WPM minus one for each uncorrected error per minute, floored at zero. This test reports net WPM as your headline score and shows the full calculation under your result.
Gross WPM counts everything you typed, right or wrong. Net WPM deducts errors you left uncorrected - one word per error per minute. A fast but sloppy run can have a high gross and a much lower net; employers and certifications care about net.
Accuracy = correct keystrokes ÷ total keystrokes × 100. Every key press is judged the moment you press it, so a corrected mistake still counts against accuracy - the same convention typing.com, Monkeytype and 10FastFingers document. In the CHI 2018 study, typists left 1.167% of characters uncorrected on average.
Against accuracy, yes - the error keystroke was still pressed, and correcting it costs time. Against net WPM, no - only errors left uncorrected in your final text are deducted. Fixing mistakes is usually worth it: uncorrected errors cost a full word each per minute.
CPM is characters per minute: CPM = WPM × 5, following the same 5-character word standard. This test shows both. Some exams and non-English-speaking countries state requirements in keystrokes or characters per minute rather than words.
Because real words vary in length, text-entry measurement standardizes a 'word' as any 5 characters, spaces and punctuation included. The convention traces to early-1900s typing competitions, was documented by Yamada (1980), and is the definition used in HCI research and by every major typing test.
Yes. The top 10% of 168,000 measured typists start at about 78 WPM and average 89.6 WPM, so 100 WPM is comfortably inside the fastest decile. The fastest typists in the dataset exceeded 120 WPM. Speed and accuracy rise together: the fastest decile left only 0.71% of characters uncorrected versus 1.78% for the slowest.
60 seconds is the classic length and the default here; 15- and 30-second sprints overstate your burst speed slightly, and 120 seconds tests endurance. Official contexts use longer samples: the US OPM standard is a 5-minute test with three or fewer errors, and NCRA certification uses 5-minute takes.
Some do, and the published anchors are: 40 WPM for US federal clerk-typist and office-automation roles (OPM qualification standards, 5-minute sample, up to 3 errors), and 180-225 WPM at 95% accuracy for NCRA court-reporter certification. Private-sector data-entry listings commonly ask for 40-60 WPM, but those figures vary by employer.
Less than you might expect: in the CHI 2018 study, typists with formal training averaged 54.35 WPM versus 49.0 WPM for the self-taught - about 5 WPM. What distinguished the fastest typists was rollover typing - pressing the next key before releasing the last - not formal technique.