Reading Time Calculator — How Long Will Any Article Take?

Reading time is a single division. The formula is minutes = words ÷ words-per-minute. What makes a reading-time tool credible is the source for the words-per-minute value, the way words are counted, and whether the result is reproducible. This page documents all three.

Where the WPM presets come from

• 200 wpm — English prose. Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies found a pooled mean silent reading rate of 238 wpm for fiction and 175 wpm for non-fiction. The 200 wpm default sits within Brysbaert's general-prose confidence interval and is the most defensible single number for mixed-purpose articles.
• 130 wpm — technical and academic. Carver's reading-rate review documents that dense, vocabulary-rich text pulls comprehension pace below conversational reading. 130 wpm is the mean for scientific papers, legal text, and code-heavy documentation across the cited studies.
• 155 wpm — audiobook narration. ACX, the production platform behind Audible audiobooks, asks narrators for 9,000–9,500 words per hour of finished audio. The midpoint, 155 wpm, is the industry-standard listening pace.
• 150 wpm — slow / careful. For comprehension-critical material — exam revision, contracts, technical specs the reader will be tested on later.
• 400 wpm — fast / skim. For scanning to extract key ideas. Comprehension drops sharply past 400 wpm in every study that has measured it.

How words are counted

The calculator splits the input on any whitespace character and counts the non-empty pieces. The same input is independently re-counted using a regex match. The Verified badge on the tool lights up only when both methods produce the same number — a credibility check borrowed from the way payroll software cross-verifies tax calculations against two formulas.

Sentences and paragraphs are detected separately and reported in the breakdown panel, but neither affects the reading-time number itself. The formula is words-only.

Rounding

The headline X min read label rounds to the nearest whole minute, with a floor of <1 min read for any non-zero input under 30 seconds. The precise label underneath always shows the exact minutes-and-seconds split so the rounding is never hidden. Past one hour, the label switches to H h M min read.

• Brysbaert, M. (2019) — How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis. Journal of Memory and Language 109.
• ACX — Audio Submission Requirements (audiobook narrator pace, 9,000–9,500 words per hour)
• Words per minute — literature review (Carver 1990 and subsequent studies)
• Google Search Central — snippet length guidance (for context on text-length tools)

The reading-rate values on this page were last cross-checked against the cited sources on 2026-05-11. The page is reviewed annually or whenever a more authoritative meta-analysis is published. Pace presets used: English prose (200 wpm), Technical / academic (130 wpm), Audiobook narration (155 wpm), Slow / careful (150 wpm), Fast / skim (400 wpm).