Reading time calculator

Reading and speaking are not the same speed

Silent reading for a typical adult runs around 238 words per minute for non-fiction and about 260 for fiction — figures from Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis, which pooled some 190 studies and remains the best evidence available.

Comfortable speech is far slower, roughly 130 words per minute, and a good presentation pace is slower still at around 110. That gap is why a script you can read in five minutes takes eleven to deliver, and why so many conference talks overrun.

Choosing a reading speed

• 150 wpm — dense technical material, legal text, anything you will need to act on precisely.
• 200 wpm — careful reading where comprehension matters more than pace.
• 238 wpm — the average adult reading non-fiction. A sensible default for blog posts and reports.
• 260 wpm — fiction, which reads faster because it carries less unfamiliar vocabulary and fewer numbers.
• 350 wpm — skimming for gist, not reading. Comprehension drops sharply above roughly 300.

On speed reading

Claims of 1,000 words per minute with full comprehension do not survive testing. The physical limit is set by how much text the eye can resolve per fixation and how fast fixations can be made — roughly 300 to 400 wpm for genuine reading.

Above that, what is happening is skimming: sampling the text and reconstructing the rest from context and prior knowledge. That is a legitimate and useful skill, but it is not reading every word, and comprehension tests reliably show the difference. The most rigorous review of the field, by Rayner and colleagues, concluded there is a straightforward trade-off between speed and understanding.

Timing a talk

Take your speaking rate, not your reading rate, and then subtract. A 20-minute slot is not 20 minutes of script: allow for an introduction, pauses at slide transitions, any demo, and questions. Writing to about 80% of the slot is a reliable rule, so aim for roughly 16 minutes of script in a 20-minute slot.

Nerves speed most people up on the day, often by 10-20%, so a script timed exactly to the slot in rehearsal will typically finish early — which is a much better failure mode than overrunning.

What the estimate ignores

Word count alone cannot see difficulty. A page of dense statistics takes far longer than a page of narrative at the same length. Images, tables, code blocks and equations all interrupt reading flow, and readers commonly stop to study them. Anything requiring the reader to look something up or re-read a paragraph is invisible to a word count.

Common questions