Typing speed
A word is five keystrokes. Everything below follows from that one definition — no estimates, no average word length to argue about.
Convert a speed
- Characters / minute
- 200
- Keystrokes / hour
- 12,000
- Characters / second
- 3.33
- Time for those words
- 12 min 30 s
Nothing you type or enter here leaves your browser.
Every speed, in every unit
| Net WPM | Chars / min | Keystrokes / hour | 500 words | Where it sits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | 100 | 6,000 | 25 min | Getting there |
| 30 | 150 | 9,000 | 16 min 40 s | Getting there |
| 40 | 200 | 12,000 | 12 min 30 s | Average typist |
| 50 | 250 | 15,000 | 10 min | Fluent |
| 60 | 300 | 18,000 | 8 min 20 s | Fluent |
| 70 | 350 | 21,000 | 7 min 9 s | Fast |
| 80 | 400 | 24,000 | 6 min 15 s | Fast |
| 90 | 450 | 27,000 | 5 min 33 s | Very fast |
| 100 | 500 | 30,000 | 5 min | Very fast |
| 120 | 600 | 36,000 | 4 min 10 s | Very fast |
How long does it take to type…
Questions
What is the average typing speed?
Around 40 words a minute is the figure usually quoted for office work, where a “word” means five keystrokes. Hunt-and-peck typists are commonly in the 20s, touch typists in the 50s to 70s, and above 90 is the top few percent. Every published figure comes from a different sample, so treat them as landmarks, not measurements of you.
How do I convert WPM to characters per minute?
Multiply by five. A word is defined as five keystrokes for exactly this reason: 40 WPM is 200 characters a minute and 12,000 keystrokes an hour, with no rounding and no guesswork about how long English words are.
What is KPH and why do exams use it?
Keystrokes per hour is the same speed counted in single presses over an hour, and data-entry roles quote it because much of the work is digits and codes rather than words. It is WPM × 5 × 60, so nothing is lost translating between them.
Is gross or net speed the one to quote?
Net. Gross counts everything you typed; net subtracts one word per minute for every wrong word you left uncorrected. Employers and exams ask for net because typing fast and wrong is not typing.
Keep going
Typing test
Gross and net WPM, accuracy and keystrokes per hour — the figures typing exams use, at eight lengths from 15 seconds to 15 minutes.
Typing lessons
Fifteen short lessons, two new keys at a time, with the keyboard showing which finger goes where.
Practice texts
Type a passage from a classic book: real sentences, capitals and punctuation, with the numbers that say how hard each one is.
Key drills
A drill for each row, hand, finger and kind of character — and how much of English prose each set of keys actually carries.
Every key
One page per key: the finger that owns it, how often it is really pressed, and the letter pairs it lives in.
Weak keys
A drill built from the keys you miss most, worked out from your own tests.
Times tables
Each table with its patterns, a drill that returns to what you got wrong, and a 60-second speed test.