Why a one-minute typing test?
Sixty seconds is the length most people mean when they ask how fast they type. It is long enough that one fumbled word only nudges the result, and short enough to keep your full concentration. It also makes the arithmetic easy: your WPM is literally the number of five-character words you typed correctly in that minute.
What your one-minute score means
| Your WPM | Where that sits |
|---|---|
| Under 26 | The slowest tenth of a large online sample |
| About 52 | The average of that sample |
| Over 78 | The fastest tenth |
Those three reference points come from the 2018 Aalto University study of 168,960 typists. They describe people copying sentences on their own computers, which is close to what you are doing here, though their sentences were different from these words.
Getting the most out of sixty seconds
- Glance before you go. The minute only starts on your first letter, so read the first line first.
- Do not stop for a missed letter deep in a word. Fix it only if it is quick; a wrong word costs only that word.
- Hold a steady pace. Fast starts that fade usually score lower than an even rhythm.
- Do three runs. Take the median of three as your real speed; the history box keeps them all.
Accuracy is part of the score
Your accuracy figure counts every keystroke as it happened, so a corrected typo still shows. If it is below about 95%, slowing down a little will usually raise your WPM, because fewer words end up wrong. Raw WPM — every character you typed — tells you how fast your fingers can go once the errors are under control.
The words and passages on this site are original and free to reuse (CC0). Your results stay in your browser.