Free Typing Speed Test

A Short History of Typing Tests

The typing test predates the personal computer. The format originated with typewriter manufacturers in the 1880s-1890s: Remington, Underwood, and Royal sponsored public typing competitions to demonstrate their machines, and the 5-character word convention emerged from these early contests to standardise comparisons across different English texts. Frank McGurrin, an Underwood employee who typed by touch without looking, famously beat sight-typist Louis Traub in an 1888 Cincinnati contest, the popular event that crystallised «touch typing» as the technique to learn. The Guinness record for fastest typist on an electric typewriter, 216 WPM by Stella Pajunas in 1946 on an IBM Electric in Chicago, still stands as the symbolic ceiling. Barbara Blackburn sustained 150 WPM with peaks of 212 WPM on a Dvorak keyboard from the 1980s onward. The PC era brought typing instruction to the home: Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing (Software Toolworks, 1987) was the breakthrough consumer typing tutor, with «Mavis Beacon» a fictional persona modelled by a Haitian-American actress. TypeRacer (Alex Epshteyn, 2008) made typing into a multiplayer racing game and produced the first widely-cited competitive WPM leaderboards. The modern reference standard for typing-speed research is the Aalto University study «Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes» (Dhakal, Feit, Kristensson, Oulasvirta, CHI 2018), which measured 168,000 volunteers and established the modern desktop average of ~51.6 WPM. A companion mobile study (MobileHCI 2019) measured 37,000 phone typists and reported ~38 WPM. monkeytype (Jakub «Miodec» Grabowski, 2020) became the leading minimalist typing-test website in the developer community, popularising the «time-based» versus «word-count-based» test modes and a particularly aggressive accuracy display. Half a century after typewriter competitions, the same 5-character WPM convention still anchors every result.",

The Anatomy of a WPM Score

• A «word» is 5 characters, including spaces. The 5-character convention dates to early-twentieth-century typewriter testing. It standardises the comparison: «extraordinarily» (15 chars) counts as 3 words, «cat» (3 chars) counts as 0.6 words. Without it, scores would depend on whether the test text happened to use long words. Every modern typing test uses this convention.
• Gross WPM = (total characters typed ÷ 5) ÷ minutes elapsed. Counts every keystroke, even ones you later corrected. Gross WPM is the number that gets quoted for «fastest typist» records; it does not penalise mistakes.
• Net WPM = ((characters ÷ 5) − errors) ÷ minutes. Penalises uncorrected mistakes on a per-error basis. Net WPM is the standard for transcription-style tests where typo cost matters and the «typing storm» Gross-WPM approach is unhelpful.
• Adjusted WPM = Gross WPM × accuracy%. Combines speed and accuracy into a single number. This is the metric most modern web typing tests (monkeytype, TypeRacer, 10fastfingers) display by default. Be careful comparing 90 WPM Gross on one site to 90 WPM Adjusted on another: they are not the same number.
• Accuracy % = correct characters ÷ total typed × 100. Two flavours: strict (every typo counts against you, even if you backspace and correct), lenient (only uncorrected typos count). Different tests default differently. For a meaningful comparison over time, stick with one test and one accuracy mode.
• Burst vs sustained. A 15-second test measures burst speed: your fingers are fresh, you got lucky with the text, fatigue has not set in. A 60- or 120-second test measures sustained speed, which is closer to your real day-job productivity. For an honest number, use the longer durations. Treat 15-second results as «peak only».

Who Tests Their Typing Speed and Why

• Office baseline (~40 WPM). Most general office roles assume around 40 WPM as a baseline. Past that, thinking speed usually becomes the bottleneck before typing speed does. The Aalto 2018 study's ~51.6 WPM average comfortably clears typical office expectations.
• Customer support and call centres (50-60 WPM). Live-chat and call-handling roles often require sustained 50-60 WPM with high accuracy, because the agent must type the customer's request while the customer is still talking. Many job postings include a typing-test screen.
• Transcription and court reporting (80-100+ WPM). Audio transcription, medical scribing, and stenography all require sustained high WPM. Stenotype keyboards (chorded keys, shorthand machines) bypass standard WPM entirely; court reporters routinely reach 225+ WPM in raw stenotype.
• Software developers and writers (60-80 WPM). Code, prose, and email-heavy work benefits from comfortable touch typing without being bottlenecked by it. Past 60-70 WPM the limit is usually how fast you can think, not how fast you can type. Most developers self-assess as around 70 WPM.
• Competitive typing (120+ WPM). TypeRacer and monkeytype leaderboards are populated by competitive typists doing 150-200+ WPM on standard QWERTY. Top monkeytype players regularly post 180-200 WPM on 15-second tests. The community treats it as an e-sport.
• Education and self-improvement. The most common use case: students measuring progress, hobbyists targeting a personal best, retraining after switching to a new layout, or recovering from a hand injury. Daily 10-15 minute drills are the standard practice routine.

Standards, Layouts, and Milestones

• QWERTY (Christopher Latham Sholes, 1873). Patented by Sholes for the Remington No. 1 typewriter. Designed to reduce mechanical jamming by separating commonly-paired letters across the keyboard. The «designed to slow typists down» story is a folk myth; QWERTY persists today because every keyboard, software platform, and typing-class textbook standardised on it. Network effects beat ergonomics.
• Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (August Dvorak, 1936). Patented arrangement that puts vowels on the home-row left hand and the most-common consonants on the home-row right hand. Studies show modest speed gains (5-10%) and meaningful comfort improvements after a 1-3 month relearning period. The relearning cost is steep enough that adoption stays niche.
• Colemak (Shai Coleman, 2006). Only 17 keys differ from QWERTY, and Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V / Ctrl-X stay in their QWERTY positions, so the muscle-memory transition is far easier than Dvorak. Popular in developer communities. Variants like Colemak-DH further optimise for finger curl.
• Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing (Software Toolworks, 1987). The breakthrough consumer typing tutor that brought typing instruction from secretarial schools into the home. «Mavis Beacon» is a fictional persona, modelled by Haitian-American actress Renée L'Espérance. Sold over 6 million copies through the 1990s.
• Aalto 2018 desktop study. «Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes» (Dhakal, Feit, Kristensson, Oulasvirta, CHI 2018). Measured 168,000 volunteers on an online typing test. Established the modern desktop average at ~51.6 WPM (standard deviation ~20, max near 120). The most-cited reference for current typing-speed research.
• Aalto 2019 mobile study. «How do People Type on Mobile Devices?» (MobileHCI 2019). Measured 37,000 mobile typists. Reported an average of ~38 WPM on smartphones, substantially below the desktop average. Younger users with two-thumb technique and aggressive autocorrect (SwiftKey, Gboard) closed the gap considerably.
• TypeRacer (Alex Epshteyn, 2008). The site that turned typing into a multiplayer racing game. Public leaderboards, ranked matches against other users in real time, and quotations from books and movies as test text. Anthony «Riotmania» Ermolin and Sean Wrona are perennial top-leaderboard fixtures.
• monkeytype (Jakub «Miodec» Grabowski, 2020). Minimalist typing-test website that became the developer-community favourite. Open-source (GitHub), highly configurable (custom themes, language packs, custom word lists), and the de facto standard for the «time-based» versus «word-count-based» modes that dominate modern competitive typing.

More frequently asked questions

Why does my score change so much from test to test?

Test variance is real and normal. The text content matters (a passage with awkward digraphs like «qu», «zh», «xy» slows everyone down), the time of day matters (you're slower right after waking up), and short tests amplify any single bad word. Average across 5-10 attempts at the same duration for a stable picture of your true speed.

Does mobile typing count?

You can run the test on a phone and the WPM number will be a real measurement, but it will systematically underestimate your real mobile speed because dedicated mobile keyboards (SwiftKey, Gboard) include autocorrect, swipe / glide typing, and predictive completion that this test does not simulate. For an honest mobile benchmark, the Aalto 2019 study's ~38 WPM average is a fair reference.

Is my typed text saved or sent anywhere?

No. The entire test runs in your browser. Your keystrokes, the displayed text, and the score are computed locally. Nothing is uploaded; no account is required. Refreshing the page wipes the test state. Your typing data never leaves your device.

Why is the timer based on minutes if the tests are seconds?

WPM means «words per minute» by definition, so the formula always normalises to a per-minute rate. A 30-second test that produces 25 correct «words» (125 characters ÷ 5) becomes 50 WPM. The duration choice (15s, 30s, 60s, 120s) just controls how long the burst lasts; the WPM number is always normalised so different durations are comparable in principle, though longer durations are more reliable in practice.

Will switching to Dvorak or Colemak make me faster?

Possibly, after 1-3 months of relearning, with modest speed gains (5-10%) and noticeable comfort improvements. The cost is steep: every keyboard you encounter (work computers, friends' laptops, hotel kiosks, phones) is QWERTY. Colemak is an easier middle ground because most shortcuts and many common keys stay in their QWERTY positions. The bigger lever for almost everyone is consistent practice on whatever layout they already use.

What WPM do employers actually expect?

Varies by role. Most office jobs assume around 40 WPM as a baseline. Customer-support and call-centre roles often require 50-60 WPM with high accuracy. Transcription and court-reporting roles need 80-100+ WPM sustained. Software development, journalism, and writing-heavy work benefit from 60-80 WPM but rarely list it as a hard requirement. Past about 60 WPM, thinking speed becomes the bottleneck before typing speed does.