What Is the Best Way to Test My Average Typing Speed?

Ask most people how fast they type and you'll get a confident-sounding number that's usually wrong — sometimes by quite a lot. That's not a criticism; it's just how self-assessment of a physical skill works. You can't feel your own WPM the way you can feel, say, how tired you are. The only real way to know your average typing speed is to actually measure it, properly, more than once. Let's go through what "properly" actually means, because the way you test changes the number you get, sometimes significantly.

Start with what "average" actually means here

Before testing anything, it helps to separate two different ideas that get blurred together: your peak typing speed and your average (or sustained) typing speed. Peak speed is how fast you can go in a short, focused burst — say, one minute of full concentration. Average or sustained speed is what you can maintain over a longer stretch, closer to how you'd actually type during real work: a document, an email, a chat conversation that goes on for a while.

These two numbers are not the same, and if you only ever take 1-minute tests, you're measuring peak speed and calling it your average — which quietly inflates your sense of how fast you really type day to day.

Use a test that measures net WPM, not just gross WPM

This is the single most common source of confusion around typing speed measurement, so it's worth understanding clearly. Gross WPM counts every word you typed, mistakes included — it's your raw output regardless of accuracy. Net WPM takes that raw number and subtracts a penalty for errors, giving you a number that reflects your actual, usable typing speed.

The difference matters more than people expect. Someone who types 70 gross WPM but leaves ten uncorrected errors in a one-minute test might net out closer to 60 WPM once those mistakes are factored in. If a testing tool only shows you one number, and it feels a little too good to be true compared to how the typing actually felt, there's a decent chance you're looking at gross WPM rather than net.

If you're testing your typing speed for any purpose beyond personal curiosity — job applications, school requirements, general self-improvement — always confirm you're looking at net WPM, since that's the number that actually reflects real, sustainable typing ability.

Test for at least a full minute — longer if you can

A test under a minute produces a noisy result. A few seconds of good or bad luck — a word you happen to know well, a sentence with an awkward key sequence — can swing a very short test disproportionately. One full minute is a reasonable minimum for a quick check. If you want a number that genuinely reflects sustained ability rather than a short burst, a 3- or 5-minute test gives a steadier, more honest reading, since it smooths out those small lucky or unlucky moments over a longer stretch.

This is also why a typing speed test one minute long and a 5-minute test on the same person often produce noticeably different results — the shorter test captures a peak that's harder to sustain the whole way through a longer one.

Test more than once, under the same conditions

A single test result is a data point, not a real average. Typing speed naturally varies a bit test to test — how warmed up your hands are, how familiar the passage's vocabulary is, even how alert you're feeling in the moment all nudge the number slightly. Testing three or four times and looking at the typical result, rather than treating any single attempt as gospel, gives you a far more accurate picture of your genuine average.

Keep the conditions consistent while you do this: same device, similar time of day, same test duration. If you test once on your laptop and once on your phone, you're not really comparing your typing speed to itself — you're comparing two different physical skills, since typing on a touchscreen and typing on a physical keyboard are genuinely different motor tasks.

Test on the device you actually use

This sounds obvious, but it trips people up constantly. If your daily typing happens on a work laptop with a specific keyboard, that's what your test should reflect — not your personal desktop with a mechanical keyboard you're more used to, and definitely not your phone. Testing on an unfamiliar device measures how you type on that device, not your general typing ability, and the two can differ by a meaningful margin.

What a good testing tool should actually show you

A useful typing speed test doesn't just spit out one number and leave you guessing what it means. Look for a tool that shows:

• Net WPM, not just gross
• Accuracy percentage alongside speed, since a fast score with a high error rate isn't the full picture
• Consistent, varied passages, so you're not just getting faster at memorizing one specific block of text over repeated tests
• A choice of test duration, so you can check both a quick burst number and a longer, sustained one

A typing speed test that shows WPM and accuracy together, with the option to test at different durations, gives you exactly this — a real reading rather than a single flattering number.

How to interpret your result once you have it

Once you've tested a few times and have a consistent net WPM number, it helps to know roughly where that puts you. Average adult typing speed generally sits in the high 30s to mid-40s WPM. If you're testing specifically because a job or program has a stated requirement, compare your net WPM (not gross) directly against that number, and build in a small buffer above the minimum rather than aiming exactly at it, since a small dip under pressure on the actual day is completely normal.

For a fuller breakdown of what different WPM levels actually mean by age, job, and skill level, our guide on what's a good WPM walks through realistic benchmarks in detail. And if your testing reveals your baseline is lower than you'd like, going from 30 to 50 WPM lays out a structured way to actually raise that number.

A quick testing checklist

Before you trust a result enough to act on it — apply for a job, set a personal goal, decide you're "fast enough" — run through this:

1. 1Did the test run for at least a minute, ideally longer?
2. 2Does it report net WPM, not just gross?
3. 3Did you test more than once?
4. 4Were you on the device you actually use day to day?
5. 5Was the passage varied, not something you'd already memorized from a previous attempt?

If you can answer yes to all five, you have a genuinely trustworthy number. If not, it's worth retesting properly before drawing any conclusions from the result.

Conclusion

The best way to test your average typing speed isn't a single quick check — it's a short series of tests, at least a minute each, on the device you actually use, reporting net rather than gross WPM. Most people who think they know their typing speed have only ever taken one short test and assumed it was representative. A proper testing routine, repeated a handful of times under consistent conditions, gives you a number you can actually trust and build on.