Typing Speed Test

How to take the typing speed test

1. Choose a length. 1 minute is the standard; 30 seconds is a quick check and 5 minutes measures how well your speed holds up.
2. Click the text (or tap the box on a phone) and start typing the words you see. The timer starts on your first key.
3. Press space after every word. Correct letters turn dark, wrong ones red; a word you skipped or misspelt gets a red underline.
4. Keep going until the clock runs out. Press Tab or Restart at any time to start again with new words.
5. Read your WPM and accuracy. A result with at least 90% accuracy is saved as your best for that length in this browser.

What the results mean

The test uses the standard definitions that typing tutors and typing jobs use:

• WPM (words per minute): correctly typed characters, including the space after each correct word, divided by 5 and by the minutes. A "word" is always five characters, so long and short words count fairly.
• Raw WPM: everything you typed divided by 5 and the minutes, errors included. The gap between raw and net WPM is the cost of your mistakes.
• Accuracy: correct characters as a percentage of all characters typed.
• Errors: wrong, missing and extra characters across all the words you completed.

Accuracy matters more than speed. A fast typist with 92% accuracy spends a lot of time correcting, and in this test every error is subtracted from the net score, so 60 WPM at 98% beats 70 WPM at 90%.

How to type faster

Speed comes from touch typing: all ten fingers on the home row (A S D F and J K L ;), each key hit by the same finger every time, eyes on the screen rather than the keyboard. If you already type with a few fingers, the first weeks of switching feel slower, but the ceiling is far higher: two-finger typing tops out around 50 WPM, touch typing at over 100. Practice short sessions daily rather than long ones weekly, and practice accuracy first; speed follows automatically once the finger movements are reliable. Sit with your wrists straight and floating, not resting on the desk, and keep the keyboard low enough that your elbows are at a right angle.

The words here are the 500 most common English words, which is what most typing tests use because they reflect ordinary writing. For a test with real sentences, capital letters and punctuation, take the English typing test. For a fixed length, there are dedicated 1 minute and 5 minute tests, and the WPM test explains the formula in detail.

Does the keyboard matter?

Less than people hope. A mechanical keyboard with light switches can add a few WPM for a fast typist, mostly from a shorter travel and a clearer actuation point, but most of the gain is comfort. Laptop keyboards with very shallow keys cause more errors for some people, and a keyboard that misses or doubles keystrokes will show up as errors here no matter how well you type: check it with the keyboard tester. Latency is not a factor at typing speeds. What does matter is that the keyboard is the layout you expect; a QWERTY typist on an AZERTY or Dvorak layout will see the mistakes in red immediately.

Common problems and fixes

The clock does not start

Click on the text first so the hidden input has focus; the dimmed overlay disappears when it does. On a phone, tap the box under the words to open the keyboard.

The words scroll out of view

The current line is kept as the second of the three visible lines. If you fall behind, keep typing; the text moves with you, not with the clock.

My phone autocorrects the words

The box asks the keyboard to turn autocorrect and auto-capitalisation off, but some keyboards ignore that. Turn off autocorrect in the keyboard settings for a fair score, or test on a computer.

Every word is marked wrong

Check the keyboard layout: Caps Lock, a non-English layout, or a key that is stuck. The keyboard tester shows what each key is sending.