Reading time calculator

How to use the reading time calculator

1. Paste the text, or type its word count if you already have it.
2. Pick a reading speed. Use average non-fiction (238) for articles, reports and emails, and average fiction (260) for stories and novels.
3. If the piece has charts, diagrams or photos people will stop to look at, enter how many, and how long you think each one takes.
4. Read the exact time, or copy the rounded-up label, such as "5 min read", for a blog post or newsletter.

The time is words divided by words per minute, plus the image allowance. The label rounds up to the next whole minute and never shows less than "1 min read". The word count, speed and image numbers (never your text) go into the page address, so the copied link reproduces your result.

What is the average reading speed?

The speeds in this calculator come from the largest review of reading rate so far: Marc Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis "How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate" in the Journal of Memory and Language (volume 109). It combined 190 studies with 18,573 participants.

The presets use those numbers: slower reader is 175 and fast reader is 300, the two ends of the non-fiction range. Fiction reads faster mostly because its words are shorter on average. The figures are lower than the 300 words per minute often quoted in popular articles; as the British Psychological Society's Research Digest put it when the review came out, that older figure is unrealistic for most people.

What changes your reading speed

• How hard the text is. Technical, legal or unfamiliar material slows everyone down, often well below the average.
• Why you are reading. Studying to remember is slower than reading for pleasure, and skimming for the gist is faster but takes in less.
• Language. Reading in a second language is usually slower. The averages above are for English readers reading English.
• Age. The review found lower rates for children and older adults than for the 17 to 60 year olds most studies tested.
• The screen or page. Small type, long lines and poor contrast make reading slower and more tiring.

Reading time chart

Silent reading time for common lengths, without images:

A 1,000-word article is about a 5-minute read at the average non-fiction speed, and a 90,000-word novel is roughly 6 hours at the fiction average.

Tips for writers and editors

• Show a reading time. A short label near the title helps readers decide whether to read now or save it for later.
• Be honest about images. Charts and diagrams take real time to read. Medium-style estimates add about 12 seconds for the first image and a little less for each one after (explained here); the calculator lets you set your own figure.
• Reading aloud is slower. If the text is a script, a talk or a podcast, use the words to minutes converter instead. Speech runs at about 110 to 180 words per minute.
• Check the length as you write. The character counter shows words, sentences and paragraphs live, alongside limits for social posts.
• Cleaning up pasted text? Text copied from a PDF often has a line break at the end of every line. Remove line breaks joins it back into paragraphs first.

How words are counted

The calculator splits the text on spaces and line breaks and counts every piece that contains a letter or a digit. Hyphenated words such as "well-known" count once, numbers count as words, and stray symbols like a lone dash or bullet do not. This matches how most word processors count, so the number should be close to what you see in your editor. Languages written without spaces between words, such as Chinese and Japanese, are not counted accurately this way.