What is the average typing speed?
The average typing speed is about 40 words per minute. Professionals average 50–80, and the fastest typists cruise past 120. Here's how to read your own number honestly.
The quick answer
Across studies of everyday computer users, average typing speed sits around 40 WPM (words per minute, where a "word" is standardised to five characters). Most people who type daily for work land between 35 and 55. Trained touch typists commonly reach 60–80, and competitive typists exceed 120.
WPM by skill level
- Under 25 WPM — hunt-and-peck territory; you're reading the keyboard, not the screen.
- 25–40 WPM — typical for casual users; functional but effortful.
- 40–60 WPM — solid everyday fluency; most office work feels comfortable here.
- 60–80 WPM — proper touch typing; your hands keep pace with normal thought.
- 80+ WPM — fast; typing has stopped being a bottleneck at all.
Accuracy is the half people ignore
A raw 70 WPM with 88% accuracy is usually slower in practice than a clean 55 WPM at 99%, because every error costs a stop, a backspace and a retype — plus a little attention. That's why our typing test reports accuracy next to speed and only counts correct characters toward WPM. If your accuracy is under roughly 95%, slowing down will genuinely make you faster.
What actually improves typing speed
Unlike most cognitive skills, typing is famously trainable — it's a motor skill, like an instrument. Three things move the needle: touch typing technique (all ten fingers, eyes on the screen), consistent short practice (ten minutes daily beats an hour weekly), and accuracy-first drilling (speed follows precision, never the other way round).
Honest note: typing speed is a practical skill measure, not an intelligence score. It tells you how fast your fingers translate thought to text — nothing more, and that's plenty useful on its own.
How to test yourself fairly
Use the same device and keyboard each time — a laptop keyboard, a mechanical board and a phone screen give very different numbers. Take three runs and keep the median. And test rested: like reaction time, typing speed sags measurably when you're tired.