Read a text at your normal pace, answer four questions about it, and in under two minutes you know your real reading speed. Free, no sign-up, and as many tries as you want.
You will not see a clock while you read. A timer in front of you makes you rush, and then what it measures is no longer your reading speed.
Read at your normal pace. When you finish, hit the button.
The clock starts when you click "Start reading".
Read at your normal pace, the way you would read any book.
Four questions about the text. Without them the speed means nothing: running your eyes over the lines is not reading.
Saved in this browser only. We do not upload them anywhere.
Your result
The big number is not the highest one we could give you. It is the honest one.
600
raw wpm
25%
comprehension
150
real wpm
The figure we give you as your headline result is not the speed at which your eyes crossed the text. It is that speed discounted by what you understood. The difference changes everything. Read 600 words a minute and answer one question in four correctly, and your real speed is 150. On top of that, you walked away without three quarters of what you read.
Almost every tool in this field measures comprehension and then leads with the raw speed, which is the flattering figure. The trouble with doing it that way is that it rewards exactly the habit you do not want: skimming.
The other thing worth watching is which kind of reading you are measuring. This test measures silent reading, the kind you do on your own. The official school tables measure reading aloud, which is a good deal slower because articulation sets the ceiling. They are two different things and they do not compare.
Reference
This is the table the test uses to place you. The three levels in the tool come from here.
Child
170 wpm
Ages 8 to 11
Teen
210 wpm
Ages 12 to 17
Adult
238 wpm
Ages 18 and up
Silent reading
| Grade or age | Words per minute |
|---|---|
| Ages 8 to 10 | 145 a 175 |
| Ages 11 to 13 | 175 a 200 |
| Ages 14 to 17 | 195 a 230 |
| Adult | 175 a 300 |
| Adult with deliberate practice | 300 a 400 |
Source: Reference ranges for silent reading with comprehension intact. The adult figures come from Brysbaert, M. (2019), How many words do we read per minute? A meta-analysis of 190 studies and 18,573 readers, which puts adult English non-fiction at 238 words per minute and the usual range at 175 to 300. The school-age figures are orientative rather than official: they start from the oral norms above and the finding that silent reading runs at least 30% ahead of oral reading from the primary grades onward. Your speed moves a lot with the kind of text and how familiar the subject is. This is the measurement this page makes.
Questions
An adult reads silently at around 238 words per minute in English, with comprehension intact, and the usual range runs from 175 to 300. That figure comes from a meta-analysis by Marc Brysbaert covering 190 studies and more than 18,000 readers. Reading aloud is considerably slower, because articulation sets the ceiling: the same review puts it near 190. For children the number depends on the grade, and US schools measure it out loud.
Divide the number of words in the text by the time you took, expressed in minutes. Read 300 words in 90 seconds and that is 200 words per minute. On its own, though, that figure does not say much. Multiply it by the share you actually understood and you get the speed you really read at.
Because a timer in front of you makes you rush, and then what the test measures is no longer the way you normally read. We would rather give you an honest number than a high one. The time is still recorded, you just do not watch it while you read.
Not without losing comprehension, and not with the methods that promise it. Past a certain point, whatever you gain in speed you pay for in comprehension at close to an exact rate. What does work is reading a lot, because word recognition becomes automatic, and knowing something about the subject, because a reader who understands can anticipate.
For a whole group, paper beats a screen. School measurements are taken aloud, with the teacher timing, and that needs sheets with a running word count in the margin of every line. This test measures silent reading, which is a different thing: it works for a student measuring themselves.
No. The test is free, with no sign-up and no limit on attempts. Your results are saved in your browser only, so you can watch your progress, and we do not upload them anywhere.
Pick a subject you like, read at your own pace, and in two minutes you will know.
Take the test