Reading time calculator
Paste a text, or type a word count, to see how long it takes to read at your speed, to skim, and to say out loud.
- Skimming
- 12 sec
- Out loud
- 36 sec
- Characters
- 511
- Sentences · paragraphs
- 5 · 2
Your text stays in your browser.
How long common texts take
At the average silent reading speed of 238 words a minute, and a speaking pace of 150:
| Text | Words | Reading | Out loud |
|---|---|---|---|
| A long email | 300 | 1 min 16 sec | 2 min |
| A blog post | 1,000 | 4 min 12 sec | 6 min 40 sec |
| A long-form article | 3,000 | 12 min | 20 min |
| A short story | 7,500 | 31 min | 50 min |
| A research paper | 9,000 | 37 min | 1 h |
| A novella | 30,000 | 2 h 6 min | 3 h 20 min |
| A typical novel | 90,000 | 6 h 18 min | 10 h |
Reading speed and understanding
Reading faster mostly means understanding less. Eye-tracking research shows that our eyes jump along a line in short hops, taking in only a few letters sharply at a time, and that speed-reading techniques work by skipping, not by seeing more. For a dense report or a textbook, budget closer to 150 or 200 words a minute; for light fiction, 300 is easy.
Plan your reading like any other work
Knowing a report is 40 minutes long turns “read it sometime” into a task that fits in a session. Put it in the Pomodoro calculator, or read it in one sitting with the deep work timer.
Questions
How many words a minute does the average person read?
About 238 words a minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction, silently, according to Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review of 190 studies covering nearly 18,000 readers. Claims of 1,000 words a minute and more come with a big loss in understanding.
How long does a speech take?
At about 150 words a minute, a typical pace for presentations and narration, a 1,000-word speech runs close to seven minutes. Slow down for a big room, and leave time for pauses.
How is a word counted?
Anything separated by spaces that contains a letter or a number. Dashes and stray punctuation don't count; hyphenated words count once.
Is my text uploaded?
No. The counting happens in your browser, and nothing you paste leaves the page.
Further reading
- Active recall: the study method that beats rereadingActive recall means testing yourself instead of rereading. What the research shows, why it works, and six practical ways to use it in your study sessions.
- How to use the Pomodoro Technique for studyingThe Pomodoro Technique was made for studying. How to run study sessions in Pomodoros, an example study block, and how many to do in a day.
More free tools
- Pomodoro timer25 minutes of focus, then a break. With a seat-belt chime.
- Deep work timer52/17, 50/10 or 90-minute blocks for deeper work.
- Pomodoro calculatorHow many Pomodoros your tasks take, and when you'll finish.
- Eisenhower matrixDo, schedule, delegate or drop: sort your to-do list.
- Meeting cost calculatorWhat a meeting costs in salary and in lost focus time.
- Context switching calculatorHow much focus your interruptions cost you in a year.