Reading Time Calculator
Estimate reading and speaking time from your word count.
Reading Time: 0 secSpeaking Time: 0 secWord Count: 0
220 wpm
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reading time
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speaking time
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words
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Estimating reading time
Adding a “5 min read” label to an article sets expectations and tends to improve engagement. The estimate is simply word count divided by reading speed: most adults read 200–250 words per minute silently, while reading aloud is slower, around 130 wpm — useful for scripts, speeches, and voiceovers. Adjust the slider to match your audience.
For deeper analysis, try the word counter and keyword density checker, or clean source first with Markdown to plain text.
Built and maintained by Meet Shah · Last updated
What this tool is used for
- Adding an honest reading estimate to an article's header.
- Deciding whether a piece needs splitting before publishing it.
- Estimating how long a script will take to read aloud for a video or a talk.
- Comparing two drafts on length rather than on feel.
- Checking a piece against a target length for a newsletter slot.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What reading speed should I use?
- Around 220 words per minute is the usual default for adult silent reading of general prose, and the range across readers is wide — 180 for dense technical material, 300 for light text. Reading aloud is far slower, closer to 150, which is why audio estimates need a different number.
- Does the estimate account for images and code?
- No — it counts words. A tutorial full of code blocks and screenshots takes considerably longer than its word count suggests, because a reader stops to parse each one. Medium's original estimator added a flat 12 seconds per image for exactly this reason.
- How are words counted for non-English text?
- By the shared word counter, which segments scripts that do not put spaces between words — Chinese, Japanese, Thai — rather than treating a whole paragraph as one token. Reading speed in those scripts is measured in characters per minute anyway, so treat the minute figure as indicative.
- Why show a sentence count as well?
- Because average sentence length is a better readability signal than word count alone. It is counted with a real sentence splitter rather than by counting full stops — the naive version reads a final sentence with no terminator as zero, and a Chinese article as zero outright.
- Is a displayed reading time worth adding to a page?
- The evidence is that it helps — it sets an expectation before the reader commits, and a short honest number reduces bounces more than a hidden long one does. What matters is that it is honest: an estimate that is consistently half the real time trains readers to ignore it.
Common errors and gotchas
- Applying a prose reading rate to technical content, where code and tables slow readers down substantially.
- Assuming one words-per-minute figure fits every audience and every language.
- Counting code blocks and tables as prose, which inflates the estimate.
- Publishing a badge that consistently underestimates, which readers notice and stop trusting.
- Treating reading time as a quality target rather than a courtesy.
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