Reading Time Calculator
How long your text takes to read or say — and how many words fill a 5-minute talk.
HTML tags and Markdown link addresses are not counted as words; images are counted.
Speed and images
Counted from your text; you can change it.
Paste text or enter a word count.
For your page
— — — The HTML uses a <time> element with an ISO 8601 duration; the JSON-LD line is schema.org’s timeRequired property for an Article or BlogPosting.
At other speeds
| Activity | Speed | Time |
|---|
The comparison appears when there is something to time.
Average adult speeds in English: silent reading and reading aloud from Brysbaert (2019); speech from the National Center for Voice and Speech. Individual speeds vary widely.
About the Reading Time Calculator
Find out how long a text takes to read silently, to read aloud or to deliver as a talk. Paste the text (plain, Markdown or HTML) or just enter a word count, choose a speed, and add viewing time for the images in a blog post. The calculator also works the other way round: tell it how long your speech or video script should be and it tells you how many words to write.
The speeds are research averages for adults reading English: 238 words per minute for silent reading of non-fiction, 260 for fiction and 183 for reading aloud (Brysbaert, 2019), and about 150 words per minute for speech, the average speaking rate of English speakers in the United States according to the National Center for Voice and Speech. You can also set your own speed.
How to use it
- Choose Paste text and paste your article, or Word count if you already know how many words it has.
- Pick the Reading speed for your situation: silent reading, reading aloud or a speech. Use Custom speed for your own pace.
- For a blog post, check the Images count (found automatically in Markdown and HTML) and how much time to add for each one.
- Copy the 5 min read label, the HTML snippet or the JSON-LD property for your page.
- For a talk or video, choose Time → words and enter the length to see how many words you need.
Examples
1,190 words · silent reading (238 wpm) · images: 12 s, 11 s, 10 s
1,190 ÷ 238 = 5 min reading + 33 sec for images = 5 min 33 sec → “6 min read” (rounded up)
Time → words · 5 min · speech (150 wpm)
5 × 150 = 750 words
Common uses
- Adding an accurate “X min read” label to blog posts and newsletters.
- Planning the length of a speech, presentation, wedding toast or podcast segment.
- Writing a video or radio script that has to fit a time slot.
- Estimating how long students or readers need for a reading assignment.
The reading speeds
- Silent reading, non-fiction: 238 wpm and fiction: 260 wpm — the averages Marc Brysbaert found in a meta-analysis of 190 studies with 18,573 participants (Journal of Memory and Language). Non-fiction is slower mainly because its words are longer.
- Reading aloud: 183 wpm — from the same review (77 studies, 5,965 participants).
- Speech or presentation: 150 wpm — the average rate of speech for English speakers in the United States, according to the National Center for Voice and Speech. Pauses for slides, demonstrations or questions add to that.
These are averages. Brysbaert found that most adults read English non-fiction silently at 175–300 wpm and fiction at 200–320 wpm, and that children, older adults and people reading in a second language read more slowly.
How the time is calculated
Reading time = words ÷ words per minute. For images, the default adds 12 seconds for the first image, 11 for the second and one second less for each further image, but never less than 3 seconds, on the assumption that readers spend less time on each further picture. You can switch to the same time for every image, or turn image time off.
The label rounds up by default (any part of a minute counts as a minute), or to the nearest minute if you prefer; it never shows less than 1 minute. Words are counted with the same Unicode rules as the Word Counter; HTML tags, scripts and Markdown link addresses are not counted.
Limitations
- The speeds are for English. Other languages need different numbers of words for the same message, so their rates per word differ; for Chinese or Japanese text a word count is not a good measure of length at all.
- Image time is a rule of thumb, not a measurement; charts or diagrams that need studying take longer.
- Speaking time does not include pauses, slides, demonstrations or audience questions.
Privacy
Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.
Frequently asked questions
How many words is a 5-minute speech?
About 750 words at 150 words per minute, the average speaking rate of English speakers in the United States. If you speak more slowly — or want time for pauses — choose Custom speed under Time → words and enter your own pace; timing yourself reading a paragraph aloud gives a good figure.
How long does it take to read 1,000 words?
About 4 minutes 12 seconds at the average silent reading speed for non-fiction (238 wpm), and about 5 minutes 28 seconds reading aloud (183 wpm).
Why does the Word Counter show a different reading time?
The Word Counter uses one round figure (225 words per minute). This calculator uses the published averages for each kind of reading and lets you choose.
Should the label round up or to the nearest minute?
Rounding up never promises a shorter read than the text really is: 4 min 20 sec becomes “5 min read”. Nearest minute shows it as “4 min read”. The label never shows less than 1 minute.
Is my text uploaded?
No. Words and images are counted in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere.