Typing Test: How Fast Do You Type?

When the typing test loads, you see a short passage of everyday prose and three time options: 15, 30 or 60 seconds. Click the text or tap it on a phone, then start typing. The clock does not move until you press your first key, so you can read the opening words and settle your hands before you begin.

As you type, each character you get right lights up and each mistake turns red, so you always know where you went wrong. When time runs out, the typing test stops on its own and shows your net words per minute, your accuracy and your best result on this device. Restart gives you the same passage again; New text loads a different one.

Typing speed is measured in words per minute (WPM), but a word here is a standard unit of five characters, with spaces and punctuation counted as characters too. That keeps the number fair: a passage full of long words is not slower on paper than one full of short ones. This typing test reports net WPM, so only the characters you typed correctly count.

The formula is simple: correct characters divided by five, divided by the minutes on the clock. Type 150 correct characters in 30 seconds and you have 30 words in half a minute, which is 60 WPM. Accuracy is the share of the characters you typed that matched the passage. Mistakes do not take anything extra away; they just add nothing to your speed.

Around 40 words per minute is the figure most often cited as an average speed for adults who type regularly. Anything from about 60 to 70 WPM upward is generally considered fast, and people who type for a living, such as transcriptionists, often go well beyond that. Exact averages vary from source to source, so treat these as rough guides rather than hard lines.

Your result screen places you in one of five broad bands: under 25 WPM is getting started, 25 to 39 is below average, 40 to 59 is average, 60 to 79 is fast, and 80 or more is very fast. Your score on any typing test also shifts with the passage, the keyboard, the time limit and how awake you feel, so the most useful comparison is with your own earlier runs.

The biggest gain usually comes from touch typing, which means typing without looking at the keys. Rest your left fingers on A, S, D and F and your right fingers on J, K, L and the semicolon. This is the home row. Each finger then reaches up and down its own column. Most keyboards have small bumps on F and J so you can find the position by feel.

Sit with your feet flat, shoulders relaxed and wrists loose, with the screen roughly at eye level. Put accuracy first: if red characters keep piling up, slow down until you can type cleanly, then raise the pace little by little. Short daily practice beats one long session, so a few rounds of the typing test each day for ten or fifteen minutes is a solid routine.

You can take the typing test on a phone or tablet, but expect a different number. Thumb typing on glass leans heavily on autocorrect and word suggestions, and those help very little here because every character has to match the passage exactly. Most people are noticeably slower on a touchscreen than on a physical keyboard, and their accuracy often dips as well.

For a fair picture of your progress, stick to one device and one time limit. A laptop or desktop keyboard gives the clearest reading of your real typing speed. If most of your writing happens on your phone, testing there is still worthwhile; just compare phone scores with phone scores and keyboard scores with keyboard scores.

Some employers ask candidates to take a typing test, especially for administrative, data entry, transcription and customer support roles. Their tests may use other passages, time limits or scoring rules, so think of your result here as practice and a rough guide rather than a certificate. If a job lists a minimum speed, train until you clear it with room to spare, because nerves tend to cost a few words on the day.

This typing test is also available in Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish, with passages written natively for each language rather than translated. Those versions add an ignore accents switch, on by default, so a plain e counts for é, c for ç and n for ñ. It is handy when your keyboard makes accented letters hard to reach, and you can switch it off to practise them.