Free Typing Speed Test

This free typing test checks how fast and how accurately you type. There's nothing to press first: the test is ready when the page opens, so just start typing the words in the box. The clock starts with your first key. When the time is up you get your typing speed in words per minute (WPM), your accuracy and a fun speed rank, from Snail all the way to Rocket.

Pick a quick 15 or 30-second sprint, the classic 1-minute typing test, or a longer 2, 3 or 5-minute test. You can also type a set number of words: 10, 25, 50 or 100. Then choose what to type: common words, whole sentences, short stories from Aesop's fables, passages from classic books, or easy words in the kids mode. Add punctuation, numbers or capital letters when you want a harder test.

Your results show net and gross WPM, characters per minute, accuracy and consistency, a speed chart for every second, your slowest keys and a keyboard heatmap of your mistakes. Your personal bests and progress are saved in your browser, the daily test gives everyone the same text each day, and you can download a free typing certificate with your name on it.

The test works on computers, Chromebooks, tablets and phones. On a phone, tap the text and type with your on-screen keyboard. No sign-up, no download, nothing to install.

The 1-minute typing test is the most popular: long enough for a fair score, short enough to try again and again. The 15 and 30-second tests measure your top speed. The 2, 3 and 5-minute tests show whether you can keep that speed up, which is closer to real typing work. Job typing tests often last 5 minutes: many U.S. government office jobs ask for 40 WPM on a 5-minute test with no more than 3 errors (U.S. Office of Personnel Management).

Prefer a fixed amount of text? Switch from time to words and pick 10, 25, 50 or 100 words. The test ends when you type the last one.

Typing real sentences is harder than typing a list of words, because you need capital letters, commas and full stops too. Choose Sentences for short everyday sentences written for this test, Stories for a whole Aesop's fable, or Book quotes for passages from classic books such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan and The Wind in the Willows.

The fables (George Fyler Townsend's 1867 translation) and the book passages are in the public domain. They are copied word for word from Project Gutenberg, and the results tell you which book you typed.

The Kids mode uses short, friendly words like animals and food, and the same speed ranks, so every result feels like a step up the animal ladder. There's no chat, no sign-up and nothing to buy.

There's no official typing speed that children should reach at a certain age. In one U.S. study of about 1,700 elementary school students, fifth graders typed about 12 to 16 words per minute by the end of the school year, and students in every grade got faster after a year of keyboarding lessons (Donica and others, 2019). Kids who want to learn to touch type can race through the typing lessons in Keytona.

After a test, press Certificate, type your name and download a certificate with your speed, accuracy, test length and date. It's a picture you can print, add to a school folder or send to a friend. It's free, and it shows what you typed on this test; it isn't an official exam result.

It depends on what you need it for, but real numbers help:

• 40 WPM is a solid everyday speed, and it's what many U.S. government office jobs ask for (OPM).
• About 50 WPM is average. In a study of about 168,000 people who took an online typing test, the average speed was 52 WPM (Dhakal and others, 2018).
• Above 78 WPM puts you in the fastest 1 in 10 of that study, and its fastest typists reached 120 WPM or more.
• Court reporters must pass tests at up to 225 WPM with 95% accuracy, but they use a stenotype machine that types whole words with key combinations (NCRA).

Accuracy matters as much as speed: aim for 95% or more. In the big typing study, fast typists also made fewer mistakes, because fixing errors takes time.

You may have read that the average person types 40 words per minute. We couldn't find a study behind that number. The largest study we know of found 52 WPM, among people who chose to take a typing test online.

Does typing speed drop with age? On phones, younger people were faster in the big phone study. On computer keyboards, a classic study of typists aged 19 to 72 found that experienced older typists were not slower than younger ones: they seemed to make up for it by reading further ahead (Salthouse, 1984).

In typing tests, a word is any 5 characters, counting spaces and punctuation. Typing tests have used this rule since the early 1900s, and it makes long and short words count fairly (MacKenzie, York University). This test works out:

• Net WPM, your main score: the characters you typed correctly, divided by 5, per minute. Mistakes you leave in don't count.
• Gross WPM (raw speed): every character key you pressed, right or wrong, divided by 5, per minute.
• CPM: correct characters per minute (net WPM × 5).
• Accuracy: the keys you got right, out of all the character keys you pressed. A mistake you fix still counts as a mistake.
• Consistency: how steady your speed was from second to second. 100% would mean exactly the same speed every second.

For example, in a 1-minute test you type 250 characters correctly and 10 wrong. Your net speed is 250 ÷ 5 = 50 WPM, your gross speed is 260 ÷ 5 = 52 WPM, and your accuracy is 250 ÷ 260 = 96%.

Another typing test may give a slightly different number for the same typing. There's no single official formula for net WPM, and tests take off mistakes in different ways (Keith and Ericsson, 2007).