Average Typing Speed: What the Data Actually Says

The honest number: around 40 WPM

Multiple independent datasets land on the same figure. Wonderlic, which builds pre-employment assessments, puts the average adult at about 40 WPM. The accuracy figure for that same population, roughly 92%, comes from Ratatype and TypingTest.now rather than from Wonderlic. Ratatype measured 41.4 WPM across 506,024 typing tests. And TypingTest.now's published dataset of 100,079 tests shows a median of 39 net WPM. Three sources, three methodologies, one conclusion: the typical adult types about 40 words per minute.

There is a second, higher number you will also see quoted: 51.56 WPM. That comes from the largest typing study ever run, the Dhakal et al. CHI 2018 study of 136 million keystrokes from 168,960 typists. It is peer-reviewed and enormous, but its participants were people who voluntarily took an online typing test, a group that skews younger and more keyboard-confident than the general public. The spread was wide too, with a standard deviation of 20.2 WPM, and only the fastest 10% of participants typed faster than about 80 WPM.

Average typing speed by group

A note on the extremes: the fastest verified competitive typists average around 220 WPM in races with bursts beyond 290, and the historic record often cited for Barbara Blackburn (150 WPM sustained on a Dvorak keyboard) is disputed, since Guinness stopped tracking keyboard records after 1987.

Why averages differ between sites

If you have seen averages anywhere from 38 to 55 WPM, none of them are necessarily wrong. They measure different things:

• Who takes the test. Self-selected online testers (Dhakal's 51.56) type faster than a true cross-section of adults (about 40).
• Test length. A 1 minute test is a sprint and reads 8 to 15 WPM higher than a 5 minute test of the same typist.
• The formula. Net WPM subtracts uncorrected errors, gross WPM counts everything typed. The same performance can differ by 5+ WPM between the two.
• Text difficulty. Common-word tests produce higher scores than passages with punctuation, capitals, and rare words.

How to compare yourself: percentiles beat averages

"Above average" tells you very little when the distribution is this wide. A better question is what percentile you sit in. On TypingTest.now's 100,079-test dataset, 51 WPM already puts you in the top quarter, 69 WPM in the top 10%, and 83 WPM in the top 5%. We keep the full breakdown, including skill bands and profession benchmarks, on the typing speed chart. Age matters too, mostly as a proxy for practice years, and we cover that separately in average WPM by age. For a plain-language verdict on your own number, see what is a good WPM.

How fast can you realistically improve?

Faster than you might expect, and not for the reason most people assume. The Dhakal study found that formal typing training barely matters: typists with formal training averaged only about 5 WPM more than self-taught ones (54.4 vs 49.0 WPM). What actually predicts speed, per the companion Feit et al. 2016 research, is consistent finger-to-key mapping, preparing the next keystroke while finishing the current one, and keeping hand movement minimal. Those are trainable habits.

In practice, most people who deliberately practice 15 to 20 minutes a day gain 10 to 20 WPM within a couple of months (a typical range, not a guarantee). The key word is deliberate: research by Keith and Ericsson in 2007 found that practice with explicit speed goals beats mere typing experience, and raw motor ability did not predict typing skill at all. Start with a baseline on the 1 minute typing test, hold accuracy at 95% or higher, and work through the free touch typing lessons. Your stats page tracks the trend so you can watch the average become your floor.