GUIDE
Average typing speed
The figure usually quoted is about 40 words per minute for an adult using a computer keyboard, with professional typists around 65–75 and the fastest competitive typists well past 150. Treat all three as rough. None comes from a study you can check, and "average" depends entirely on who was measured.
Where the 40 WPM figure comes from
It is worth saying plainly: nobody can point you to the study. The number circulates on every typing site, is repeated in articles that cite those sites, and traces back to no measurement anyone can name. It is not necessarily wrong — it is consistent with what typing tutors observe — but it is folklore rather than a finding, and it is presented everywhere as a finding.
The honest version is that typing speed depends so heavily on who you measure that a single average is close to meaningless. Measure people who type for a living and you get one number. Measure a cross-section of adults including those who use a phone for almost everything and you get another. Measure people who chose to take an online typing test — which is where most of the circulating data comes from — and you have measured people interested enough in their typing speed to test it, who are not a random sample of anybody.
This site will eventually be able to publish a real distribution, because the leaderboards record actual results across 86 languages. It cannot yet: there are not enough of them, and publishing a distribution drawn from a handful of results would be repeating exactly the mistake described above.
What the commonly quoted bands look like
With the caveat above firmly attached, the bands below are what typing tutors, employers and test sites broadly agree on. They are useful as landmarks and worthless as precision.
| Band | Net WPM | What it usually means |
|---|---|---|
| Hunt and peck | Under 25 | Typing by looking, one or two fingers leading |
| Functional | 25–40 | Touch typing partially formed, frequent glances down |
| Average adult | around 40 | The number everyone quotes; comfortable everyday typing |
| Proficient | 50–70 | Touch typing without thinking about it |
| Professional | 65–80 | The range usually asked for in typing-heavy roles |
| Fast | 80–110 | Noticeably quick; rarely the bottleneck in any task |
| Competitive | 110+ | Deliberately trained; the top of public leaderboards |
What a WPM number actually counts
A "word" in words per minute is not a word. It is five characters, spaces included, and it has been five characters since typing tests were run on typewriters by people with stopwatches. "Elephant" and "the cat" are both a little under two words by this measure, which sounds absurd until you consider the alternative: a test scored in real words would rate you faster for typing a page of "a a a a a" than a page of prose.
The fixed-width convention is also what lets a Finnish result mean the same thing as an English one. Finnish words are long, Vietnamese words are short, and a real-word count would make the two incomparable. Five characters is arbitrary; being arbitrary in the same way for everyone is the entire point.
Two numbers come out of it. Gross WPM is everything you typed divided by five, over the minutes elapsed. Net WPM subtracts the mistakes you left standing. Net is the one worth watching, because it is the only one that corresponds to work you would not have to do again.
| From | To | Multiply by | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| WPM | CPM (characters per minute) | 5 | 60 WPM = 300 CPM |
| WPM | KPH (keystrokes per hour) | 300 | 60 WPM = 18,000 KPH |
| CPM | WPM | ÷ 5 | 400 CPM = 80 WPM |
| KPH | WPM | ÷ 300 | 10,000 KPH = 33 WPM |
Why your speed varies so much between tests
People are often surprised to score 20 WPM apart on two tests taken minutes apart. The tests are usually not measuring quite the same thing.
The biggest single factor is the word list. A test drawn from the 200 most common English words is dramatically easier than one drawn from real prose, because common words are short and you type them as single motions rather than letter by letter. Add punctuation and capitals and most people lose 10 to 20 percent immediately. Add numbers and it falls further, because the number row is the part of the keyboard almost nobody has drilled.
Test length matters in the other direction. A 15-second test flatters you: you can sprint for 15 seconds. Over two minutes your real sustainable speed shows up, along with the fact that concentration is a finite resource. If you want one number that describes you, take the longer test.
- Word source
- Common-word lists inflate speed relative to real prose, often by 15–25%.
- Punctuation and capitals
- Usually costs 10–20%, because both require a modifier key and break rhythm.
- Numbers
- Costs more than people expect; the number row is the least-drilled part of the keyboard.
- Duration
- Short tests measure your sprint; two minutes or more measures you.
- Error handling
- A test that stops you on an error produces a very different number from one that lets you run on.
What is a realistic speed in a script you are new to?
Much lower than your English speed, for a while, and the reason is not your hands. When you type a script you know well, seeing a word and producing it is one motion. When the script is new, it is a lookup followed by a motion — and the lookup is slow in a way that has nothing to do with dexterity.
That gap closes, and it closes faster than most people expect once the layout stops requiring conscious recall. What it does not do is close gradually and evenly; most people describe it as several weeks of frustration followed by a fairly sudden arrival. Typing speed in a new script is best ignored for the first fortnight, which is why this site's lessons count clean repetitions rather than minutes.
Questions
Is 40 WPM a good typing speed?
It is about the commonly quoted average for an adult, so it is unremarkable rather than good — and for most jobs it is entirely sufficient. If you type for a living, 40 WPM is worth improving; if you do not, accuracy is a better use of your effort than speed.
Is 60 WPM with 95% accuracy good?
The 60 is good. The 95% is the part to work on. At 95% accuracy you are making a mistake every 20 characters, roughly one every three or four words, and each one costs a backspace and a re-aim. Most people who fix their accuracy find their net speed rises without ever trying to type faster.
What is the fastest typing speed ever recorded?
The figures usually cited are Stella Pajunas at 216 WPM on an IBM electric typewriter in 1946, and Barbara Blackburn, often credited with sustaining around 150 WPM and peaking above 200 on a Dvorak keyboard. Both are widely repeated and neither is easy to verify independently, which is true of most typing records.
Does typing speed still matter?
Less than it did for the job market and more than people think for day-to-day work. The gain from touch typing is not really the speed; it is that the keyboard stops occupying your attention, so your thinking stops being interrupted by your hands.
Put it into practice
Reading about typing is the smaller half. The beginner course starts on the home row, the speed test will tell you where you stand, and all of it works in 86 languages without an account.