What Is a Good Typing Speed? Average WPM by the Numbers
The largest public study of typing, 136 million keystrokes from 168,000 volunteers, found an average of about 52 words per minute (WPM), with the fastest participants at around 120 WPM (Aalto University and University of Cambridge, 2018). Anything above 60 WPM with high accuracy is good for most jobs.
How WPM is calculated
A “word” is standardised as 5 characters, including spaces. Net WPM = correct characters ÷ 5 ÷ minutes. Raw WPM counts every character typed, mistakes included. Example: 251 correct characters in one minute = 50 WPM.
Typing speed bands
| WPM | What it means |
|---|---|
| Under 25 | Beginner, often looking at the keys |
| 25–40 | Below average |
| 40–60 | Average (the study average is about 52) |
| 60–80 | Above average: comfortable for jobs with a lot of typing |
| 80–100 | Fast |
| 100+ | Very fast; the study’s fastest typists reached about 120 |
What makes typists fast
The study found that faster typists make fewer errors, and that overlapping key presses (pressing the next key before releasing the last, called rollover) are common among them. Speed comes from accuracy and rhythm, not from rushing.
- Learn touch typing: fingers rest on A S D F and J K L ;, thumbs on the space bar.
- Practise 10–15 minutes a day; short daily sessions beat long weekly ones.
- Keep accuracy above 95% before trying to go faster.
- Measure progress with the same test length; one minute is standard.