text tool

Reading time calculator

Paste your text or type a word count, and the reading time appears at three paces: 200, 238 and 300 words a minute. The middle figure, 238, is the measured average for adults reading non-fiction silently, and the calculator turns it into a minutes read label you can copy.

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How it works

  1. 1

    Paste text or type a number

    Choose Pasted text or A word count. With pasted text, every run of characters between spaces that holds a letter or a digit counts as a word.

  2. 2

    Read the three paces

    Careful at 200, average adult at 238 and quick at 300 words a minute, each shown in minutes and seconds.

  3. 3

    Copy the label

    The label rounds the 238 figure up to whole minutes, such as 6 min read, and copies with one tap.

  4. 4

    Add your own pace if you know it

    Open Your own pace, type the rate you timed yourself at, and a fourth card appears. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored, ever.

Where 238 comes from

In 2019 Marc Brysbaert reviewed 190 studies of reading speed, covering 18,573 participants, and estimated the average silent reading rate for adults in English at 238 words a minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction. Fiction reads faster mainly because its words are shorter. The same review found most adults fall between 175 and 300 words a minute for non-fiction, and that the higher figures often quoted in popular writing overstate how fast people really read.

Which figure to quote

For an article's minutes read label, quote 238 rounded up to a whole minute, which is what the copy button gives you. Round up rather than to the nearest minute: a reader who finishes early is pleased, and one who overruns feels misled. For a report, a policy or instructions people must act on, plan with 200, since careful reading is slower. Use 300 only to show the fastest a familiar reader could get through the text, never as the label. Whichever pace you pick, use the same one across a site, so that two articles with the same label really take about the same time.

Who reads more slowly

The same review found reading rates are lower for children, for older adults and for people reading English as a second language. If you write for any of those readers, the careful figure is the honest one. Technical text with numbers, defined terms and references slows everyone down as well, because readers stop to check. A reading time is an average, so a six minute label will be four minutes for some readers and ten for others.

Limits worth knowing

This calculator times silent reading. Reading the same words aloud averages 183 words a minute in the same review, so a script, a speech or a voiceover takes noticeably longer; the speaking time calculator handles those. Pictures, charts and tables take time that a word count cannot see, so allow a little more for a visual piece. The rates are English ones, and a language that needs more words for the same message reads at a different words a minute figure.

Writing to a set time

When a piece has to take five minutes to read, work backwards: five minutes at 238 words a minute is about 1,190 words. The document generator takes a prompt of up to 10,000 characters, so the target length and the sections you want can go into the prompt itself, and the result can be checked here once it is written. Ten minutes at the same pace is about 2,380 words, and a two minute read about 480, which suits a newsletter item or a notice most people will only skim.

Limits

  • Reading time is not speaking time. Reading aloud is slower, so for a talk or a voiceover use the speaking time calculator.
  • The rates are for silent reading of English. Other languages need a different number of words for the same message, so the figures do not carry straight across.
  • Only words are counted; pictures, tables and charts add reading time that no word count captures.

What it does not do

  • It does not measure your reading speed for you; time yourself and type the figure in.
  • It does not judge how hard the text is to read; the word counter gives a readability score.
  • It does not keep the text you paste.

Questions people ask

How long does it take to read 1,000 words?

About four minutes and twelve seconds at 238 words a minute, the average for adults reading non-fiction silently. A careful reader at 200 takes five minutes, and a quick one at 300 takes three minutes and twenty seconds. For a minutes read label, round the average up and quote five minutes.

Is reading time the same as listening time?

No. Listening runs at the speed the words are spoken, and reading aloud averages about 183 words a minute, well below silent reading. A 1,000 word article that takes about four minutes to read takes five and a half to hear. Use the speaking time calculator for anything that will be read aloud or narrated.

Should headings and captions be counted?

Count everything a reader will actually read: headings, captions, pull quotes and table text all take time. Leave out menus, footers and boilerplate such as a sign up box. Pasting the article body usually picks up the right text; if it brings navigation with it, delete those lines before you read the figure.

Why do other calculators give different times?

Most use one round number chosen long ago, often 200 or 250, rather than a measured average. The 2019 review of 190 studies put adult silent reading of non-fiction at 238 words a minute and found many popular figures were overestimates. Different rules for counting numbers and hyphenated words also move the word count a little.

Does the text I paste get saved?

No. The text stays in this page and is counted on your device; no network request carries it, which you can check in the network tab of your browser. Nothing is stored either, so a refresh clears the box. That matters when the draft is an embargoed announcement or a report nobody else has seen yet.

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Sources

Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .