WPM calculator, your typing speed and accuracy.

A WPM calculator turns a number of words and a time into words per minute. Type how many words you typed and how long it took, and you get two speeds: the gross speed, which counts every word, and the net speed, which takes your mistakes off. You also get your accuracy. If you do not know the word count, paste the text you typed and the tool counts the characters for you.

How to use the WPM calculator

1. Under I know, choose whether you know the number of words, the number of characters, or want to paste your text. The last choice pastes two texts and finds your mistakes.
2. Type Words typed, or the characters, or paste your text.
3. Type the time under Minutes and Seconds. Or press Start on the stopwatch when you begin typing and Stop when you finish, and the time fills in.
4. Type Words with a mistake. Leave it at 0 if you made none. In the two text choice this is worked out for you.
5. Read Net WPM first. Press Save this result to keep it in this browser, or Copy result to share it.

The formulas, with a worked example

Gross WPM is the words typed divided by the minutes. Net WPM takes the mistakes off first: (words typed minus words with a mistake) divided by the minutes. Accuracy is the share of words with no mistake.

Say you typed 250 words in 5 minutes and 10 of them had a mistake. Gross WPM is 250 ÷ 5 = 50. Net WPM is (250 − 10) ÷ 5 = 240 ÷ 5 = 48. Accuracy is 1 − 10 ÷ 250 = 0.96, so 96%.

Counting words from text

Typing tests do not count words by spaces, because a long word would count the same as a short one. A common way is to treat a fixed number of characters as one word. This page starts with 5 characters, spaces included, and you can change the number under Characters in one word. A pasted text of 1,500 characters at 5 characters a word is 300 words. Typed in 5 minutes, that is 60 gross WPM. Different tests use different rules, so a score from another site may not match this one exactly.

How long will it take to type...

This table is plain division: words divided by words per minute.

The tool also shows how long 1,000 words and a 500 word page take at your own net speed.

What is the average typing speed?

One large study gives a real number. Dhakal and colleagues at Aalto University studied 168,960 volunteers who each typed 15 English sentences in an online test. Their average speed was 51.56 WPM, with a standard deviation of 20.2, and the average share of uncorrected mistakes was 1.167% (CHI 2018 paper, read 24 Oct 2026). The people chose to take part, so this is not an average for everyone. The paper also found that trained typists were about 5 WPM faster than untrained ones, and the fastest reached 120 WPM or more. The tool shows how far your net speed is from 51.56. The best number to compare with is still your own. Take a test now, then again in a few weeks, and use Save this result to watch it change.

Finding mistakes by comparing two texts

Choose I will paste both texts, and find my mistakes. Paste the text you were given in the first box and what you typed in the second. The tool matches the two word by word. A word that is spelled differently, missing or extra counts as one mistake, and the first twelve are listed so you can see them. It also shows how much of the text matches character by character. The speed uses the characters you typed divided by the characters in a word. Neither text is saved.

A short example. The text given is the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog and you typed the quik brown fox jumps over lazy dog in 20 seconds. The tool finds two mistakes: quick typed as quik, and the missing second the. You typed 38 characters, which is 7.6 words at 5 characters a word. Gross speed is 7.6 ÷ (20 ÷ 60) = 22.8 WPM and net speed is (7.6 − 2) ÷ (20 ÷ 60) = 16.8 WPM. Character by character, 88.4% of the text matches. A sample this short is harsh, so use a paragraph or more for a fair score.

Raising your net speed

• Accuracy comes first. Every mistake costs a word in net WPM and time to fix.
• Look at the screen, not the keys, and keep a steady rhythm.
• Take short, regular practice rather than one long session.

How mistakes change your net speed

Say your gross speed is 60 WPM over 5 minutes, which is 300 words. This table shows what each number of words with a mistake does to net WPM and accuracy.

Each mistaken word takes 0.2 WPM off at this length (one word in a 5 minute test). That is small, but a high count adds up, and each mistake costs real time to fix when you type for work.

Characters per minute

Characters a minute is the words times your characters per word, divided by the minutes. At 5 characters a word, 60 WPM is 300 characters a minute and 40 WPM is 200. Some tests and jobs quote characters a minute, so the tool shows both.

For a live test, use the typing test. To turn a word count into a time, try words to minutes, and to count a text, use the word counter.