85 WPM is faster than 97% 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 1 in 30 typists are this fast or faster. That is 1.8 standard deviations above the mean.

Is 85 WPM a good typing speed?

85 words per minute is faster than 97% of people in a study of 168,000 online typists. The mean is 52 WPM, so 85 is 33 WPM above it.

Percentile

97%

of typists are slower than 85 WPM

85 WPM

85 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	97%	1 in 30

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 85 WPM you type at about 65% of the speed people talk, which is around 130 words per minute.
A 500-word email is about 5.9 minutes of pure typing at this speed. Thinking is extra.
The study measured people typing sentences they could see. Composing text while typing is slower for everyone.

Questions

Is 85 WPM good?: 85 WPM is faster than 97% 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 85 WPM?: About 1 in 30 typists are this fast or faster. That is 1.8 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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