TIMED PRACTICE · Suomi
Finnish typing speed test
Flow like a stream. Space commits a word, backspace fixes the last one. Tab or Esc restarts.
Testing your Finnish typing speed
Finnish uses the Latin alphabet you already have. The practice words here add 2 characters beyond a-z — ä, ö.
If you already touch type English, most of Finnish transfers on the first session. What does not transfer is the 2 characters this bank reaches for beyond a-z — ä and ö — and they are not decoration: leave them off and the word is misspelled. A steady minority in this bank needs at least one.
Most people arrive at Finnish able to type and unable to type Finnish, which is a narrower problem than it feels. The letter keys are already done. What is left is a small number of positions, and the willingness to reach for them rather than paste them in.
Of the 19 characters these 45 words use, one alone accounts for roughly 11%. Frequencies like that are why touch typing can be learned at all — you are not memorising 19 equally important characters, you are automating a handful and filling in the rest over time.
The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 45 common Finnish words — 19 distinct characters in all, averaging 4.3 written units per word. Nothing about the test is fixed except the fairness of it: the same bank, sampled fresh, so a result today is comparable with a result next month. Duration, word count, punctuation and digits are all yours to set.
- Writing system
- Latin
- Keyboard layout
- Latin QWERTY family
- Direction
- left to right
- Practice words
- 45
- Distinct characters
- 19
- Average word
- 4.3 units
Characters beyond a-z in the Finnish practice words
- ä17
- ö2
Counted across the 45 practice words. 29% of them need at least one.
rauhalliset kädet löytävät kotirivin helpostiLong words, doubled letters, and almost no consonant clusters
Finnish is agglutinative and case-heavy — fifteen cases, expressed as suffixes — so words are long and a single Finnish word often translates as an English phrase. Typing Finnish means typing fewer, longer words than almost any other language here.
It also doubles letters meaningfully. Both vowels and consonants can be short or long, and length is written by doubling: tuli is fire, tuuli is wind, tulli is customs. A doubled letter is not emphasis; it is a different word, so accuracy matters in a way it does not in languages where a stray repeat is obviously a typo.
Finnish uses ä and ö, on the Swedish/Finnish keyboard, and native Finnish words avoid consonant clusters at the start of a word — which is why loanwords historically lost their first consonant: strand became ranta.
Questions about typing in Finnish
Is the Finnish typing test the same every time?
No. Words are drawn at random from the Finnish bank on every run, so there is nothing to memorise and a second attempt is a fresh test rather than a rehearsal. You can fix the duration or the word count, turn punctuation and numbers on, or paste your own text.
What is the difference between raw and net WPM?
Raw counts everything you typed; net subtracts what you got wrong and left wrong. A large gap between the two is the most useful signal on the results screen — it means the speed is there and the accuracy is not, which is a different problem from simply being slow, and a faster one to fix.
Does accuracy matter more than speed?
For a score, they are the same measurement — net WPM already penalises errors. For improving, accuracy matters more, because the fastest route to a higher number is almost always removing mistakes rather than moving your fingers faster.
Do I need a Finnish keyboard?
No. Your operating system already offers a layout that produces ä and ö from the keys you have — through a dead key on some, a modifier such as right Alt on others. Which one depends on the language and on the layout you select; the hardware does not change either way.
Which Finnish keyboard layout do these tests use?
Latin QWERTY family, plus the 2 characters beyond a-z that these practice words use. The 45 practice words between them use 19 of those 28, so 9 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.
What will I actually be typing in Finnish?
45 of the most common words in Finnish, drawn at random. They use 19 distinct characters between them and average 4.3 written units each, with the longest running to about 8. Short, frequent words are used on purpose: they are the ones your hands will meet most often outside a lesson, so the practice transfers.
Is Finnish hard to type?
Only slightly, if you already touch type. 29% of the practice words need a character outside a-z, 2 such characters appear in total, and the rest is a keyboard you already know. The difficulty is concentrated in a handful of positions rather than spread across the layout.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
Neither. There is no paid tier and no required sign-in — the 45 Finnish practice words, the speed test and all three games are the whole product, available immediately. Signing in is worth it only if you practise on more than one device.
Also in Finnish: lessons and typing games.
Other languages written in Latin: French, German, Haitian Creole, Hausa, Hungarian, Icelandic. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- Typing postureMost posture advice is furniture marketing. The parts that matter are wrist angle, elbow height, screen height and how often you stop.
- Why your typing speed stopped improvingNearly everyone stalls somewhere in the middle. What causes a typing plateau, why more of the same practice does not clear it, and what does.
- Does your keyboard matter?Mechanical against membrane, laptop against desktop, split against straight. What genuinely changes your typing, what only changes how it feels.