What counts as a good typing speed score?
The average typing speed is about 40 words per minute. Below 30 WPM is slow, 40 to 50 is average, 60 to 80 is fast, and above 100 WPM is professional level. This test scores net WPM, meaning correct characters divided by five per minute, so errors reduce your score rather than being ignored.
What the Typing Speed measures
- Motor sequencing: how efficiently practised finger movements chain together.
- Sustained attention across a full minute.
- Speed and accuracy trade-off management, since errors are subtracted rather than forgiven.
How the test works
- A passage appears. The timer starts on your first keystroke, not before.
- Characters turn green when correct and red when wrong as you type.
- The run ends after 60 seconds, or immediately if you finish the passage.
- Net WPM is correct characters divided by 5, divided by minutes elapsed. Accuracy is reported alongside.
Typing Speed score benchmarks
| Level | Score | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Professional | 100+ WPM | Transcription and competitive typing territory. |
| Fast | 70 to 99 | Well above average, touch typing confidently. |
| Above average | 55 to 69 | Comfortable touch typist. |
| Average | 40 to 54 | The typical adult range. |
| Below average | 25 to 39 | Usually partial touch typing or hunt-and-peck. |
| Slow | Under 25 | Common on phones and for non-touch typists. |
Percentiles on your result screen are calculated against published population norms until enough scores are recorded here to rank against real players.
What affects your typing speed score
- Technique
- Touch typing versus hunt-and-peck is the largest single difference, worth 20 to 40 WPM.
- Keyboard
- A familiar full-size keyboard beats a laptop, which beats a touchscreen by a wide margin.
- Accuracy
- Because this is net WPM, a 2% error rate costs more than typing slightly slower would have.
- Text
- Familiar, common words are typed faster than unusual ones. All passages here are ordinary prose.
How to improve your score
- Learn touch typing properly. Nothing else comes close for raw gain.
- Slow down until accuracy is above 97%, then rebuild speed. Errors cost double.
- Keep your eyes on the text, not the keys or your hands.
- Practise common letter pairs and word endings rather than random characters.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good typing speed?
Around 40 WPM is average for adults. 60 to 80 WPM is fast, and above 100 WPM is professional level. For most office work, anything above 50 WPM with high accuracy is comfortable.
What is net WPM?
Correct characters divided by five, divided by minutes elapsed. The divide-by-five convention treats five characters as one standard word. Errors are excluded, so net WPM penalises inaccuracy.
Is typing speed related to intelligence?
Only very loosely. It is mostly a practised motor skill. It appears here because it indexes sustained attention and motor sequencing, not reasoning.
How can I type faster?
Learn proper touch typing, then prioritise accuracy over speed until you are consistently above 97% correct. Speed follows accuracy, not the other way round.
Why is my phone score so much lower?
Thumb typing on glass has a much lower physical ceiling than ten fingers on keys. Compare phone scores to phone scores.
Sources
- Dhakal, V., Feit, A. M., Kristensson, P. O., & Oulasvirta, A. (2018). Observations on typing from 136 million keystrokes. CHI '18.
These games are for curiosity and practice. They are not diagnostic instruments and no result here should be read as a clinical or IQ assessment.
