Reading time calculator
How long will this take to read? Paste the text, or enter a word count or a number of pages, and set your reading speed. The default is 238 words per minute, the research average for adults reading non-fiction silently in English.
Words are counted in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.
250 words per page is an assumption, not a measurement. There is no standard page: font, type size, margins and page size all change it, so change this number to fit your book. To measure it, count the words on three full lines, average them, and multiply by the number of lines on a full page.
Averages from Brysbaert (2019). Don't know your own speed? Take the free reading speed test — about two minutes, and it checks comprehension too.
How the estimate works
Reading time is the number of words divided by your speed in words per minute. That's all the calculator does, so the only parts worth thinking about are the two inputs.
The speed. The default comes from Marc Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis (How many words do we read per minute?, Journal of Memory and Language, volume 109), which combined 190 studies covering 17,887 people. Adults reading silently in English averaged about 238 words per minute for non-fiction and about 260 for fiction; reading aloud averaged about 183. The fiction figure is higher mainly because fiction uses shorter words. Your own speed can sit well away from any average, which is why the speed test is worth two minutes.
The words. Pasted text is split on spaces and dashes. A hyphenated word like well-known counts as one word, a number like 1,500 counts as one, and stray punctuation such as a lone dash or bullet doesn't count at all. Word processors disagree with each other on edge cases like these, so a small difference from your editor's count is normal. Page counts are only as good as the words-per-page figure, so measure it if the answer matters.
Reading times at average speeds
Using Brysbaert's averages. Times are rounded.
| Words | Non-fiction · 238 wpm | Fiction · 260 wpm | Aloud · 183 wpm |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | 2 min 6 s | 1 min 55 s | 2 min 44 s |
| 1,000 | 4 min 12 s | 3 min 51 s | 5 min 28 s |
| 2,000 | 8 min 24 s | 7 min 42 s | 11 min |
| 5,000 | 21 min | 19 min | 27 min |
| 10,000 | 42 min | 38 min | 55 min |
| 25,000 | 1 hr 45 min | 1 hr 36 min | 2 hr 17 min |
| 50,000 | 3 hr 30 min | 3 hr 12 min | 4 hr 33 min |
| 100,000 | 7 hr | 6 hr 25 min | 9 hr 6 min |
Can you just read faster?
A little, and honestly. Comprehension falls as reading speed rises, and the most thorough review of the research — Rayner, Schotter, Masson, Potter and Treiman, So Much to Read, So Little Time (Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2016) — found no technique that removes that trade-off. The same review points to the dependable route: reading rate rises with familiarity, so people who read more read faster. The faster rows in the calculator are what that kind of gain would be worth on material you know well. They aren't a promise for a textbook or a contract. There's more on this in Does speed reading work?
What a reader can do is remove friction: losing your line, re-reading without meaning to, and drifting off while your eyes keep moving. An RSVP reader shows one word at a time at the pace you set, so none of those happen quietly.
Questions people ask
How is reading time calculated?
Divide the number of words by your reading speed in words per minute. 5,000 words at 238 words per minute is 5,000 ÷ 238 ≈ 21 minutes.
How long does it take to read 1,000 words?
About 4 minutes at the research average of 238 words per minute for silent reading of non-fiction (Brysbaert, 2019), and about 5½ minutes read aloud.
How many words are on a page?
There is no standard: it depends on the font, the type size, the margins and the page size. Count the words on three full lines, average them, and multiply by the number of lines on a full page for a figure that fits your book.
Will reading faster save me that time?
Only if you still understand what you read. Comprehension falls as speed rises, and research has found no technique that removes that trade-off (Rayner et al., 2016). Modest gains come mostly from reading more.