Reading speed test
Read a passage at your normal pace, then answer three questions about it. You get a words-per-minute score and a comprehension score, because speed without comprehension is not reading. Takes about two minutes.
Pick a passage
The timer starts the moment the passage appears, so get comfortable first.
How the score is calculated
Your raw score is the passage word count divided by the minutes you spent reading. Comprehension is the share of the three questions you answered correctly. Effective WPM multiplies the two, which is the number worth tracking: reading at 900 WPM while understanding a third of it is slower than reading at 300 and understanding all of it.
What is the average reading speed?
The average adult reads English silently at about 238 WPM for non-fiction and 260 WPM for fiction, and aloud at about 183 WPM. Those figures come from a 2019 review of 190 studies covering 18,573 readers (Brysbaert, Journal of Memory and Language).
What the numbers mean
- Under 200 WPM: below typical adult pace. Often subvocalisation, or reading on a screen with a lot of visual noise.
- 200-300 WPM: the range most adults land in for ordinary prose.
- 300-450 WPM: fast. Usually a practised reader on familiar subject matter.
- Above 450 WPM: genuinely quick, and worth checking your comprehension score before celebrating.
Claims of 1,000+ WPM with full comprehension do not survive testing. Above roughly 500 to 600 WPM, comprehension drops measurably for most people on unfamiliar material. Techniques like RSVP help by removing wasted eye movement, not by removing the need to process the words.
How to actually get faster
- Test yourself first so you have a baseline that is not a guess.
- Reduce subvocalisation (the inner voice reading each word) by pacing slightly faster than comfortable.
- Stop regressing. Re-reading the same line is where most reading time disappears; an RSVP reader makes it impossible.
- Practise on material you already understand before pushing speed on hard text.
- Re-test after a couple of weeks and compare effective WPM, not raw WPM.
Privacy
The test runs in this page. Nothing you read, answer or score is sent anywhere. See the privacy policy.
Reading speed test FAQ
What is a good reading speed in WPM?
For adults reading English silently, 200 to 300 WPM is normal (the research average is 238 WPM for non-fiction and 260 WPM for fiction). A score of 300 to 450 WPM with full comprehension is fast.
What is effective WPM?
Effective WPM multiplies your raw words-per-minute score by your quiz comprehension percentage. Reading at 600 WPM with 33% comprehension yields an effective speed of 200 WPM.
How long does this reading speed test take?
About two minutes. Each passage is roughly 210 words long, followed by three multiple-choice comprehension questions.
Is my reading speed score saved or sent to a server?
No. The timer and quiz run in your browser tab and nothing is transmitted anywhere.