Reading Time Calculator
Paste the text and see how long it takes to read, to read aloud, and to present. Or start from the time slot and find out how many words to write.
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At 183 words a minute, the measured average for reading aloud.
Writing a talk? Work backwards from the time slot
Somewhere between 600 words if you take it slowly and 800 if you move briskly. Write to the low end: pauses, questions and the slide that will not load all come out of the same minutes.
Knowing how long it takes to read is the easy part.
The hard part is finding an unbroken hour to write it. PomoTodo runs focus sessions against the piece you are working on, so a draft that has been nearly done for a week shows up as the time it actually took.
Free plan tracks unlimited focus time across unlimited tasks. No card required.
You have a draft and a question. Is this a three minute read or a ten minute one? Will the speech fit the slot you were given, or will someone start waving at you from the back of the room?
Paste it here and you get three answers at once: silent reading time, reading aloud time, and presenting time at a pace you choose. The reading speeds are not guesses. They come from a 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies, which put the average adult at 238 words a minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction.
It works the other way round too. Tell it how long your talk is and it tells you how many words to write.
How many words is a 5 minute speech?
At a typical presenting pace of 140 words a minute, a 5 minute speech is about 700 words. The table covers the common slots at three speaking speeds.
| Talk length | Slow, 120 wpm | Typical, 140 wpm | Brisk, 160 wpm |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 minute | 120 words | 140 words | 160 words |
| 2 minutes | 240 words | 280 words | 320 words |
| 3 minutes | 360 words | 420 words | 480 words |
| 5 minutes | 600 words | 700 words | 800 words |
| 7 minutes | 840 words | 980 words | 1,120 words |
| 10 minutes | 1,200 words | 1,400 words | 1,600 words |
| 15 minutes | 1,800 words | 2,100 words | 2,400 words |
| 20 minutes | 2,400 words | 2,800 words | 3,200 words |
| 30 minutes | 3,600 words | 4,200 words | 4,800 words |
Write to the slow column if there will be slides, questions, or a room that laughs in the right places.
How long does it take to read 1,000 words?
About 4 minutes 12 seconds read silently, 5 minutes 28 seconds read aloud, and a little over 7 minutes presented. Here are the common lengths.
| Words | Read silently | Read aloud | Presented |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | 2 min 6 sec | 2 min 44 sec | 3 min 34 sec |
| 1,000 | 4 min 12 sec | 5 min 28 sec | 7 min 9 sec |
| 1,500 | 6 min 18 sec | 8 min 12 sec | 10 min 43 sec |
| 2,000 | 8 min 24 sec | 10 min 56 sec | 14 min 17 sec |
| 3,000 | 12 min 36 sec | 16 min 24 sec | 21 min 26 sec |
| 5,000 | 21 min 1 sec | 27 min 19 sec | 35 min 43 sec |
Where the reading speeds come from
Most reading time tools quote a round 200 or 250 words a minute, and speed reading sites go higher. The figures here come from a 2019 meta-analysis by Marc Brysbaert in the Journal of Memory and Language, which pooled 190 studies of adult readers. It put silent reading of English at 238 words a minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction, and reading aloud at 183.
Fiction reads faster mainly because its words are shorter on average. Technical writing, dense contracts and anything a reader is trying to learn will run slower than the average, so if your readers are studying rather than skimming, lower the speed.
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Questions
How is reading time calculated?
Divide the number of words by a reading speed in words per minute. This calculator uses 238 words a minute by default, the average for silent reading of non-fiction found in Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies. A 1,200 word article comes out at a little over 5 minutes.
How many words is a 5 minute speech?
About 700 words at a typical presenting pace of 140 words a minute, or 600 to 800 depending on how quickly you speak. Aim for the lower end, since pauses, applause and questions all come out of the same five minutes.
What is the average reading speed?
For adults reading English silently, about 238 words a minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction, according to a 2019 review of 190 studies. Reading aloud is slower, around 183 words a minute. Figures of 300 words a minute and above are common online but are not what the research found.
Why does another site show a different reading time?
Every platform picks its own words-per-minute figure, and some add time for images or code. There is no standard, so only compare reading times that were worked out the same way. You can match another site here by changing the speed.
Does it count words the same way as Word or Google Docs?
Close to it. A word is anything between spaces that contains a letter or a number, so a lone dash or bullet does not count, and a hyphenated word counts once. Word processors have their own rules for things like links and dashes, so totals can differ by a little.