Guides / Productivity

How to Measure Your Typing Speed and Accuracy

Typing speed is usually given in words per minute, but a fast score with many mistakes does not help much. A fair test measures both speed and accuracy.

How words per minute is counted

Most tests count five characters as one word, spaces included. The number of characters divided by five, then divided by the minutes taken, gives the words per minute. A 100-character passage typed in one minute scores 20 words per minute.

Accuracy

Accuracy is the share of characters that match the passage. Typing 95 of 100 characters correctly is 95% accuracy. Speed with low accuracy is slower in real work, because corrections take time.

Get a fair score

• Type from the screen rather than copying and pasting. Pasting makes the time meaningless.
• Use the same passage and keyboard when you compare results.
• Take several tests and look at the average, since one run can be unusual.

Try it yourself

The Typing Speed Test starts the timer with your first key and shows words per minute and accuracy when you finish.