Typing speed test

How to take the typing test

1. Choose a duration (1 min is the default) and a text: Words or Sentences.
2. Click the typing field and start. The timer starts with your first key.
3. Type the highlighted word, then press Space to move on. Fix a mistake with Backspace before you press Space: once you move on, the word is submitted.
4. When the time is up you get your result. Finish now ends a run early, and Esc restarts.

Pasting is turned off, so every character has to be typed. The texts were written for this site: a list of common English words and a few hundred everyday sentences, mixed differently on every run.

The test shows your home row for a US QWERTY keyboard: rest your index fingers on F and J, the keys with the small bumps.

Words or sentences, 1, 3 or 5 minutes

• Words: common words in lower case, no punctuation. You measure pure finger speed, and the numbers usually come out higher.
• Sentences: real sentences with capital letters, commas and full stops. Closer to typing an email or an essay, so it is the more honest test of everyday speed.
• 1 minute: quick check, easy to repeat.
• 3 minutes: the length many typing tests for jobs use. A tired second half shows up here.
• 5 minutes: endurance. Your speed and accuracy over a longer stretch.

Personal bests are stored for each combination (duration, text, and physical keyboard or phone), so a 1-minute word run never competes with a 5-minute sentence run.

Gross WPM vs net WPM, accuracy and keystrokes

Typing tests count a "word" as 5 characters, including spaces, so long and short words are treated fairly.

• Gross WPM: all typed characters ÷ 5 ÷ minutes. Raw speed, mistakes included.
• Net WPM (the big number): gross WPM minus one word per minute for every error you left in the text. If you type 300 characters in 1 minute (60 gross WPM) and leave 4 errors, your net speed is 56 WPM.
• Accuracy: correct keystrokes ÷ all keystrokes. Errors you fixed still lower accuracy, but not net WPM.
• Keystrokes / min: correctly typed characters per minute, including spaces.
• Correct words and wrong words: how many submitted words matched the text exactly.

So net WPM rewards both speed and care. A fast, sloppy run can have a high gross WPM and a much lower net WPM.

Typing on a phone? The result says on a phone keyboard, and those results are kept apart from keyboard results, because autocorrect and thumbs make them a different sport.

How to type faster

• Accuracy before speed. Every error you leave costs a word per minute in net WPM, and fixing it costs time. Slow down until you are near 97 to 98 % accuracy, then speed up.
• Use all ten fingers. Start from the home row (A S D F and J K L ;) and let each finger own its keys. It feels slower for a week, then it gets much faster.
• Do not look at the keyboard. Look at the text a word or two ahead.
• Keep a rhythm instead of bursts and pauses.
• Practise little and often: three 1-minute runs a day beat one long session a week.
• Check your keyboard. Missed letters may be a hardware problem: the keyboard test shows every key, and the rollover test shows whether fast overlapping presses get lost.

For more about how keyboards report keys, see the keyboard polling rate test and the guide laptop keyboard keys not working. For a different kind of speed, try the spacebar clicker, the CPS test or the reaction time test. All are on the skill tests page.