Reading time & speaking time estimator

How to use this tool

1. Paste or type your text into the box. Everything stays in your browser.
2. Leave the reading and speaking speeds as they are, or change them to match your audience.
3. Read the reading time and the speaking time, together with word, character and sentence counts.
4. Copy the summary, for example to add a "5 min read" label to a post.

How it works

Reading time is the word count divided by a reading speed. Studies of adult silent reading suggest an average near 238 words per minute for non-fiction, so a 1,000-word article takes just over four minutes. Speaking is slower: about 150 words per minute is a comfortable pace for a talk, so the same text takes close to seven minutes aloud.

Reading time = words ÷ reading speed
Speaking time = words ÷ speaking speed

Good to know

Speeds vary by person and by material. Technical text, small screens and a second language slow readers down, while skimmed news can be read much faster. Podcasters and presenters often use 130 to 170 words per minute, and audiobooks sit around 155. Change the speeds to fit your audience.

For a presentation, plan a little longer than the calculated time, because slides, pauses and questions add up. For web content, a visible reading time helps readers decide whether to start. The counts use spaces to separate words, so languages written without spaces, such as Chinese or Japanese, are not measured accurately.