125 WPM is faster than over 99% of the 168,000 typists in the study. That is professional-typist territory; the usual bar for the job is 80.

What is the average typing speed?

The mean in Dhakal et al. (2018) is 52 words per minute with a standard deviation of 18. Office workers average about 40 WPM, professional typists 80 or more, and the world record is 212 WPM.

About under 1 in 10,000 typists are this fast or faster. That is 4.1 standard deviations above the mean.

Is 125 WPM a good typing speed?

125 words per minute is faster than over 99% of people in a study of 168,000 online typists. The mean is 52 WPM, so 125 is 73 WPM above it.

Percentile

>99%

of typists are slower than 125 WPM

125 WPM

125 WPM by group

Percentile

Dhakal et al. 2018, normal approximation, SD 18
Group	Mean	Slower than you	1 in X
Online typists, all	52 WPM	>99%	under 1 in 10,000

Benchmarks

Common reference speeds and the share of typists each one beats
Who	WPM	Faster than
Average office worker	40	25%
Study mean (Dhakal et al.)	52	50%
Programmer, typical	60	67%
Professional typist	80	94%
Human speech	130	>99%
World record (Sean Wrona)	212	>99%

Percentile is the share of typists slower than this speed. “1 in X” counts the rarer side: people at or beyond this value above the median, at or under it below. Percentiles are estimated from a normal approximation with mean 52 WPM and SD 18.

What this means

At 125 WPM you type at about 96% of the speed people talk, which is around 130 words per minute.
A 500-word email is about 4.0 minutes of pure typing at this speed. Thinking is extra.
The study's distribution has a long right tail, so the normal approximation understates how rare speeds above 100 WPM are. Treat the percentile as a floor.

Questions

Is 125 WPM good?: 125 WPM is faster than over 99% of the 168,000 typists in the study. That is professional-typist territory; the usual bar for the job is 80.
What is the average typing speed?: The mean in Dhakal et al. (2018) is 52 words per minute with a standard deviation of 18. Office workers average about 40 WPM, professional typists 80 or more, and the world record is 212 WPM.
How rare is 125 WPM?: About under 1 in 10,000 typists are this fast or faster. That is 4.1 standard deviations above the mean.

Source: Dhakal et al., CHI 2018: 136 million keystrokes from 168,000 online typing test participants. Percentiles on this page are our estimate from a normal distribution with the stated mean and SD.

One passage, one minute, your words per minute and percentile.

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