What is a good typing speed?
Almost every page answering this repeats “40 WPM” without a source. The largest study ever published measured 51.56. Here is where you actually rank, and where each number comes from.
Correction, August 2026. An earlier version of this article gave average speeds broken down by age and profession. Those tables were not drawn from any study — they were plausible-sounding numbers, which is worse than no numbers. They have been removed and replaced with figures from a published, peer-reviewed dataset that you can go and read.
The short answer
A good typing speed is anything above about 52 WPM, because that is where you pass the measured average. Above roughly 78 WPM puts you in the fastest 10% of people. Below about 26 WPM puts you in the slowest 10%, which is the range where deliberate practice pays back fastest.
Those three thresholds are not our estimates. They are the values reported in the study described below.
Where these numbers come from
In 2018, researchers at Aalto University and the University of Cambridge published Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes at CHI, the main human-computer interaction conference. It remains the largest published dataset on how people actually type.
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Participants | 168,960 |
| Keystrokes analysed | 136,857,600 |
| Mean typing speed | 51.56 WPM (SD 20.2) |
| Fastest 10% threshold | approx. 78 WPM |
| Slowest 10% threshold | approx. 26 WPM |
| Fastest participants | 120 WPM and above |
| Using QWERTY | 98.1% |
| Mean time typing per day | 3.2 hours |
| Definition of a word | Any five characters |
Citation: Dhakal, V., Feit, A.M., Kristensson, P.O. and Oulasvirta, A. (2018). Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes. Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The dataset is publicly released for scientific use, so the figures above are checkable rather than merely cited.
Why this makes your score comparable. The study defines a word as any five characters — the same convention TypeCrt uses, and the standard in text-entry research. So a WPM figure from a test here can be placed directly against these percentiles. Our exact formula is written out at /docs/metrics.
Where you rank
Take your best recent score and read across. These bands come from the measured distribution, not from opinion about what counts as fast.
| Your speed | Where that sits | What to work on |
|---|---|---|
| Under 26 WPM | Slowest 10% | Technique first. Stop looking at the keyboard, even though it is slower at first. |
| 26–40 WPM | Below average | Consistent finger placement. Accuracy before speed. |
| 40–52 WPM | Just under average | Weak keys and awkward letter pairs — this is where targeted drilling starts to beat general practice. |
| 52–78 WPM | Above average | Reduce pauses. Your ceiling is usually a handful of specific keys, not overall speed. |
| 78–120 WPM | Fastest 10% | Consistency and error correction. Raw speed is no longer the constraint. |
| 120+ WPM | Top of the measured range | You are past the point this article is useful. |
Run one 60-second test, then compare against the table. A single 15-second test is too short to be stable — the standard deviation across the study population was 20.2 WPM, and your own variance between short tests is not much smaller.
Why everyone says 40 WPM
Search this question and nearly every result says the average is 40 WPM. None of them cite a study. The number appears to have propagated by repetition — each page citing the last.
There is a plausible origin. Older laboratory research, largely from the 1980s, measured typists on electric typewriters and in transcription tasks, and reported figures in the 60–75 WPM range for professional typists with far lower figures for everyone else. Somewhere between that literature and the modern web, a general-population figure of 40 settled in and stopped being questioned.
51.56 WPM, from 168,960 people, beats 40 WPM from nowhere.
Two things have changed since those studies. People now type for a mean of 3.2 hours a day, and they learn informally, from years of messaging and email rather than from a keyboarding class. The population got more practised while the quoted benchmark stood still.
What actually predicts speed
The same study compared participants who had taken a typing course against those who had not. The result is not what typing-course marketing would predict.
| Group | Mean WPM | Std. dev. |
|---|---|---|
| Had taken a typing course | 54.35 | 20.80 |
| Had not | 49.00 | 19.73 |
| Difference | 5.35 WPM | Cohen's d = 0.27 (small) |
Roughly five words per minute, classified by the authors as a small effect — and 72% of participants had taken a course, so this is not a fringe comparison. Having been formally taught helps. It does not separate fast typists from slow ones.
What the study found to be far more predictive was keystroke-level behaviour: how quickly you move between specific letter pairs, particularly pairs typed with different hands or different fingers. The authors also found that rollover — pressing the next key before releasing the previous one — is far more common than expected, and that faster typists make fewer errors, not more.
What this implies for practice. If speed lives in specific letter transitions rather than in general fluency, then practice that hits your particular weak transitions should beat practice that hits everything equally. That is the entire premise of KeyForge, which scores each key from your own history and weights generated text toward the worst ones.
What employers and exams require
Formal requirements are worth separating from research, because they are administrative thresholds rather than measured facts. The most concrete ones are government examinations, which publish their standards.
| Exam or role | Commonly stated requirement |
|---|---|
| SSC CHSL (LDC/JSA, India) | 35 WPM English or 30 WPM Hindi, over 10 minutes |
| SSC CGL — DEST (India) | Approx. 2,000 key depressions in 15 minutes, English only |
| General administrative roles | Typically 45–60 WPM where a test is used at all |
| Data entry and transcription | Typically 60–80 WPM, usually with an accuracy floor |
| Court reporting | 200+ WPM, but on a stenotype machine — not a comparable measure |
Check the current notification before you rely on this. Exam requirements change between cycles, and the general job-market ranges above are conventions observed in listings, not measured data. If you are preparing for a specific exam, the official notification for your year is the only figure that counts. We have flagged which rows are administrative fact and which are convention rather than blurring them together.
Worth noting against the research: the SSC threshold of 35 WPM sits below the measured population average of 51.56. If you type at an ordinary modern speed, these exams are an accuracy test far more than a speed test — which is exactly how candidates who fail them tend to fail.
Getting faster from where you are
The distribution above suggests where effort pays. Under 40 WPM, technique dominates and general practice works. Between 40 and 78, the constraint is usually a small set of specific keys and transitions, and untargeted practice mostly rehearses what you are already good at. Above 78, consistency matters more than peak speed.
- Under 40 WPM — touch typing fundamentals, accepting a temporary slowdown
- 40–78 WPM — weak-key drilling, then punctuation and capitals, which is where most plateaus actually live
- Above 78 WPM — longer tests, real prose, consistency rather than raw speed
The longer version of this is in how to improve your typing speed.
See where you land
One minute, no account, no ads. Then compare against the percentile table above.
Take a 1-minute test →