Typing Speed Test
This test measures how fast and accurately you type. A short paragraph appears below. Copy it as quickly as you can while keeping your mistakes low. The clock starts on your first keystroke and runs for up to sixty seconds. Correct letters turn green, wrong ones turn red, and you can fix any slip with backspace. Your score is reported in words per minute, the standard typing metric, alongside your accuracy. Use a physical keyboard for a fair result.
This test needs a physical keyboard. On a phone or tablet the result can be misleading, so it will not be scored.
That run could not be scored. Your accuracy was below 80 percent, or too little was typed. Give it another go.
Your past attempts
What the typing speed test measures
This test measures two things at once: how fast you can reproduce written text and how accurately you do it. Speed is reported in words per minute, where every five characters count as one word, a convention that lets a short run and a long one be compared on the same scale. Accuracy is the share of your keystrokes that landed on the right character the moment you pressed them, so a letter you fixed with backspace still counts against it. Typing is a layered skill. Your eyes read ahead, your mind holds the next few characters, and your fingers carry out a practiced sequence of movements. Card, Moran and Newell (1983) modelled exactly this chain in their keystroke level model, breaking a typing task into the small timed actions that make it up. The score you see is the combined cost of running that chain across a full paragraph.
How touch typing becomes automatic
Skilled typing feels easy because most of it has moved below conscious control. Early on you hunt for each key and think about every letter, which is slow and tiring. With practice the brain groups frequent letter pairs and whole words into single motor chunks, so your fingers fire a stored sequence instead of placing one letter at a time. Logan (1999) studied this shift and described how typists come to rely on retrieved patterns rather than slow, deliberate searching. Salthouse (1986) found that the fastest typists are not simply moving their fingers faster; they read further ahead, keeping more upcoming characters in mind, which lets the hands stay busy without waiting. This is why looking at the screen instead of the keyboard, the heart of touch typing, raises both speed and accuracy: the eyes are freed to scout the text while the fingers run on memory.
Which factors affect it
Several things move your number. Experience is the biggest: a touch typist who never looks down will far outpace someone hunting with two fingers, and years of daily writing keep refining the skill. The keyboard matters too. A full mechanical or laptop keyboard with proper key spacing supports faster, surer movement than a cramped or unfamiliar one, and switching layouts costs you for a while. Language and the text itself play a part. Words full of accented letters or awkward letter pairs slow the hands, and a passage of long, rare words is harder than one of short, common ones. Age has a gentle effect: speed tends to peak through early adulthood and ease off slowly after, though practiced typists hold up well. Finally there is the moment. Fatigue, distraction and an unfamiliar keyboard all shave a little off, so your honest best comes when you are rested and using your own setup.
What your score means
Read these bands as a rough map, not a verdict. Your score is words per minute, so higher is better, and it is paired with an accuracy figure that has to clear eighty percent for the run to count. Around 40 words per minute is the average for an adult who types regularly; Salthouse (1986) placed typical transcription typing right about here, which is why it sits at the middle of our scale. Most healthy adults land somewhere between 40 and 75, the broad normal range. Climb above 75 and you are in fast company, the territory of people who write for a living and rarely look at the keys. Past 100 words per minute is exceptional, reached by a small minority with serious touch typing skill, and the sustained world record sits near 216 in short bursts. Below 40 is common and nothing to worry about; it usually points to a two finger style or simple lack of practice, both of which improve quickly once you learn to keep your eyes on the screen. A single run is only a snapshot, nudged by the paragraph you drew and the keyboard under your hands, so keep your honest best rather than a cold first try.
Questions
What is the average typing speed?
For an adult who types regularly it is around 40 words per minute. Salthouse (1986) measured everyday transcription typing right about there, and most people fall between roughly 30 and 60. Professionals and trained touch typists sit well above that, while a two finger style usually lands below it. The figure also depends on the text, since short, common words type faster than long or accented ones.
Do I need to type with ten fingers?
No, but it helps a great deal. Plenty of people reach a respectable speed with a few fingers and a glance at the keys now and then. The real leap comes from touch typing, keeping your eyes on the screen while your fingers run from memory. Once the common patterns become automatic, ten finger typists pull clearly ahead, because their hands never pause to hunt for the next key.
Does the keyboard layout matter?
It does, especially when you switch. QWERTY is the most common layout, while French keyboards use AZERTY and Turkish keyboards often use the Turkish Q layout, each placing letters and accented characters differently. Your speed is tied to the layout your fingers know, so moving to an unfamiliar one slows you down until the new positions become automatic. For a fair result, use the layout you type on every day.
Why is my speed different on a phone?
Because a touchscreen has no physical keys. Your fingers cannot rest on a home row or feel where each letter is, and a glass surface gives none of the feedback that guides fast typing. Autocorrect adds another layer that this test deliberately turns off. For these reasons a phone result is not scored here. To measure your true speed, use a computer with a physical keyboard.
How much does practice improve typing?
A lot, and for a long time. Typing is a motor skill, and motor skills keep improving over years of use as the brain stores more patterns as single chunks. Logan (1999) described how practice shifts typing from slow searching to fast retrieval. Deliberate drills, learning to keep your eyes off the keys, and simply writing every day all add up. Beginners often double their early speed within a few weeks of focused practice.
How fast do professional typists go?
Fast. People who type for a living, such as transcriptionists and court reporters, commonly clear 75 words per minute and many exceed 90 with high accuracy. The very top, in short bursts, reaches well over 200. These speeds come from years of touch typing combined with reading far ahead of the fingers, so the hands are never left waiting on the eyes.