Reading Speed
Read a short passage against the clock. Mean silent reading speed is 238 words per minute (SD 89). Then a rough count of how many books you have left.
A 172-word passage appears and the clock starts. Read it at your normal pace, for meaning, then press Done reading.
The passage appears here when you press Start reading. 172 words.
Your results will appear here after the test.
Look up a value: Is 300 wpm fast? and other percentile lookups.
Related tests
About this test
Read a passage at your normal pace, click done, and the module computes words per minute. The comparison is Brysbaert (2019), Journal of Memory and Language, a meta-analysis of 190 studies: silent reading of English non-fiction by adults averages 238 WPM, with SD 89.
The spread is wide. 300 WPM is faster than about 76% of readers; 400 WPM about 97%. Claims of 1,000 WPM with full comprehension do not survive testing: past about 500 WPM, people are skimming. An 80,000-word novel takes the average reader about 5.6 hours.
What is the average reading speed?
238 words per minute for silent reading of non-fiction in adults, from Brysbaert (2019). Fiction reads a little faster, about 260 WPM. Reading aloud is slower, around 180.
Is 300 WPM fast?
Moderately. 300 WPM is around the 76th percentile (mean 238, SD 89). It is the pace of a comfortable reader who is not skimming.
Does speed reading work?
Not without losing comprehension. Brysbaert (2019) and Rayner et al. (2016) both find that eye movements and language processing cap careful reading at roughly 500 to 600 WPM. Beyond that you are sampling, which is fine for a memo and poor for a contract.
Percentiles above come from the same parameters the Reading Speed module uses. See the methodology for how they are calculated.