Typing Speed Test

How the test works

The test shows a stream of random words drawn from a list of about 1,000 common English words. The words are everyday vocabulary — short function words like “the” and “with” mixed with nouns, verbs and adjectives — written in lowercase with no punctuation, so the test measures how fast your fingers move rather than how well you handle capitals and symbols. The list was put together for this site and is not an official word frequency ranking.

You type one word at a time into the box. The word you are on is underlined. When you press the space bar, the word is locked in: it turns green if you typed it exactly, or red and crossed out if anything was wrong. If the word turns red while you are still typing, you have made a mistake — use Backspace to fix it before moving on. You cannot go back to a word once you have pressed space, which keeps the scoring simple and matches how most typing tests behave.

The clock starts with your first keystroke, not when the page loads, so you can read the first few words before you begin. When the time is up the box locks and your results appear.

How WPM and accuracy are calculated

Typing speed is measured in words per minute (WPM), where one “word” is any five characters. This standard makes scores comparable no matter which words come up.

• WPM = (characters in correctly typed words, plus one space after each) ÷ 5 ÷ minutes. A word with a single wrong letter contributes nothing, which is why careful typing usually beats frantic typing.
• Raw WPM = the characters of every word you submitted, right or wrong, plus the word in progress, ÷ 5 ÷ minutes. Characters you deleted are not included. It shows your pure finger speed.
• Accuracy = correct keystrokes ÷ all keystrokes. Every key you press counts once, even if you delete it later. Backspace is not a keystroke.

Other tests sometimes call these net WPM and gross WPM. Some report characters per minute (CPM) instead, which is simply the WPM figure multiplied by five.

For example, if you type 30 correct words containing 150 letters in 30 seconds, you have 150 + 30 spaces = 180 characters, which is 36 words in half a minute, or 72 WPM.

Tips for typing faster

• Look at the screen, not the keyboard. Touch typing — keeping your fingers on the home row (A S D F and J K L ;) and reaching from there — is the single biggest improvement most people can make.
• Slow down to speed up. Practice at a pace where you make almost no mistakes. Speed builds on accuracy, not the other way around.
• Read ahead. Glance at the next word while you finish the current one so your fingers never wait.
• Keep sessions short. Several 60-second tests with a break in between help more than one long session when your hands are tired.
• Rule out the keyboard. If a key sometimes fails to register or repeats, check it with the keyboard tester before blaming your fingers.
• Track the trend. Your best score per test length and your last ten results are shown, and up to 100 results are kept in this browser, so you can see whether practice is paying off.

Your scores stay on your device

Results are saved in your browser’s local storage and are never uploaded. Only this site in this browser can read them. Use “Clear history” to remove them at any time.