Average reading and speaking speed: words per minute explained

An adult reading English silently gets through about 238 words per minute (wpm) of non-fiction and 260 wpm of fiction. Reading the same text out loud is slower, about 183 wpm, and ordinary speech runs at about 150 wpm. Use 238 for articles and reports, 260 for novels, 183 for a script read aloud and 150 for a talk. To turn any of these into a time for your own text, paste it into the reading time calculator.

The four numbers at a glance

Activity	Average speed	Typical adult range	Source
Silent reading, non-fiction	238 wpm	175–300 wpm	Brysbaert (2019)
Silent reading, fiction	260 wpm	200–320 wpm	Brysbaert (2019)
Reading aloud	183 wpm	not given as a range	Brysbaert (2019)
Conversational speech	about 150 wpm	not given as a range	National Center for Voice and Speech

The reading figures come from Marc Brysbaert’s 2019 meta-analysis in the Journal of Memory and Language. It combined 190 studies with 18,573 participants for silent reading, and 77 studies with 5,965 participants for reading aloud. The speech figure is the average rate for English speakers in the United States given by the National Center for Voice and Speech.

These are averages for adults reading in their first language. Brysbaert reports that reading rates are lower for children, older adults and people reading English as a second language, and that there are reliable differences between individuals even within the same group.

Why you may have seen 300 words per minute

Scientific and popular writing often gives 300 wpm as the average reading speed. Brysbaert’s review found that these numbers are higher than the research supports and spends a section on why the overestimates arose. For planning, 300 wpm is the top of the normal range for non-fiction, not the middle. If you build a reading-time label or a course schedule on 300 wpm, most readers will take longer than you promised.

The gap between non-fiction (238) and fiction (260) is explained by word length: non-fiction uses longer words on average, so each word takes a little longer to read. The same logic applies to technical writing full of long terms. A page of legal or scientific text will usually take longer than the average figure suggests.

Reading time for common lengths

These times were produced with the same function that runs the reading time calculator and the words to minutes converter. Each is words ÷ speed, rounded to the nearest second; from one hour up, it is rounded to the nearest minute.

Words	Speech (150 wpm)	Aloud (183 wpm)	Non-fiction (238 wpm)	Fiction (260 wpm)
100	40 sec	33 sec	25 sec	23 sec
250	1 min 40 sec	1 min 22 sec	1 min 3 sec	58 sec
500	3 min 20 sec	2 min 44 sec	2 min 6 sec	1 min 55 sec
750	5 min	4 min 6 sec	3 min 9 sec	2 min 53 sec
1,000	6 min 40 sec	5 min 28 sec	4 min 12 sec	3 min 51 sec
1,500	10 min	8 min 12 sec	6 min 18 sec	5 min 46 sec
2,000	13 min 20 sec	10 min 56 sec	8 min 24 sec	7 min 42 sec
2,500	16 min 40 sec	13 min 40 sec	10 min 30 sec	9 min 37 sec
5,000	33 min 20 sec	27 min 19 sec	21 min 1 sec	19 min 14 sec
10,000	1 h 7 min	54 min 39 sec	42 min 1 sec	38 min 28 sec
80,000	8 h 53 min	7 h 17 min	5 h 36 min	5 h 8 min

Two quick rules of thumb follow from the table: a 1,000-word blog post is a “4 min read”, and an 80,000-word novel takes a little over five hours of reading.

Which speed to use

Pick the figure that matches what the reader or listener will actually do:

• Blog posts, documentation, reports and emails: 238 wpm. This is the default in the reading time calculator and the reading time shown by the word counter.
• Novels and short stories: 260 wpm.
• A script someone reads straight through (audiobook narration, a voice-over, reading a paper at a conference): 183 wpm.
• A talk or presentation: 150 wpm. Speakers who pause for slides, laughter or questions get through fewer words; the words to minutes converter also has a slow pace of 120 wpm and works backwards from minutes to words. For a worked example, see how many words a 5-minute speech needs.
• Readers in a second language, children or a general audience reading dense material: use a lower figure than the average, or measure a few readers.

Reading speed is also not the only thing that sets reading time. Images, tables, code and re-reading add time that no word count captures. If a text is hard going, the readability checker shows which sentences slow readers down.

How to measure your own speed

The averages are a starting point; your own number is better for personal planning.

1. Choose a passage you have not read before, of the kind you normally read (an article for non-fiction, a novel for fiction).
2. Set a timer for exactly one minute and read silently at your normal pace, for understanding.
3. Mark where you stopped, then copy the part you read into the word counter. The word count is your words per minute.
4. Repeat with two or three different passages and take the average. One reading is easily skewed by an easy or hard page.

To measure speaking speed, read a page of your script aloud while timing it, then divide the words on the page by the minutes it took. For example, 420 words in 3 minutes is 140 wpm. Enter your figure as Your reading speed (wpm) or Speaking speed (wpm) in the reading time calculator and it is remembered on your device.

Speed reading and skimming

Speed-reading courses and apps often promise 500 to 1,000 words per minute or more. A 2016 review of the research by Keith Rayner and colleagues in Psychological Science in the Public Interest found a trade-off between speed and accuracy: it is unlikely that readers can double or triple their speed, for example from around 250 to 500–750 wpm, and still understand the text as well as at normal speed.

That does not make fast reading useless. The same review notes that skimming lets you get through a text faster with moderate comprehension, which is fine when you only need the gist or are looking for one fact. The reading time calculator shows a skimming row at 450 wpm for that case; treat it as a rough reference point, not a research average.

According to the review, the way to read faster while still understanding well is to practice reading and build language skill, such as vocabulary. Brysbaert’s paper makes a related point: silent reading rates are in line with the maximum speed at which people can follow speech.

Other languages

Every figure on this page is for English. Brysbaert found that reading rates in other languages can be predicted reasonably well from how many words each language needs to say the same thing as English. A language that uses fewer, longer words will show a lower words-per-minute figure for the same reading time. That is why a words-per-minute number does not carry over from one language to another. For languages written without spaces between words, such as Chinese and Japanese, a word count is not even straightforward, so time a real reader instead of converting.