Typing · distribution and percentiles

Average Typing Speed

The average typing speed for an adult on a full keyboard is about 40 words per minuteat roughly 92% accuracy. The spread matters more than the average: a quarter of adults type below 27 WPM and a quarter above 55 WPM, so “average” describes a very wide middle. The full distribution is below, followed by a test that places your own score on it.

Median: 40 WPM
Lower quartile: 27 WPM
Upper quartile: 55 WPM
Top 1%: 100 WPM

Typing speed distribution table

Read it as: a typist at this net WPM is faster than this percentage of adults. The curve is the model used for the percentile readout on every typing page here, anchored on the 40 WPM average and stretched to the long right tail that large typing corpora show. It is a model, not a survey of this site’s visitors.

Modeled distribution of adult net typing speed
Percentile	Net WPM	Description
1st	10	Hunt and peck, or an unfamiliar keyboard layout.
5th	15	Hunt and peck, or an unfamiliar keyboard layout.
10th	20	Below the range where typing keeps up with thinking.
25th	27	Lower quartile. Common among people who rarely type long text.
40th	33	Approaching the middle of the distribution.
50th	40	The median adult typist. The 40 WPM figure everyone quotes.
60th	46	Comfortably above average without formal training.
75th	55	Upper quartile. Faster than three adults in four.
85th	65	Meets the 60 WPM floor stated in most data-entry job adverts.
90th	72	Professional office speed, sustainable over a working day.
95th	84	Transcription territory, assuming accuracy holds above 97%.
99th	100	Top one per cent. Rare to sustain across a full five-minute test.

Find your own percentile

One minute, common English words. The result panel reports your net WPM and the percentile it corresponds to on the table above.

1 minute · percentile check

Time left

1:00

Net WPM

0.0

Accuracy

0.0%

Errors

0 correct

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Click or tap here and start typing — the clock starts with your first keystroke

Ready — 1 minute. Type the words above; the clock starts when you do.

Per-key error heatmap

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Average typing speed by context

Where different groups and devices sit
Context	Typical range	Why
Adult, hunt and peck	20–30 WPM	Eyes on the keyboard means every keystroke costs a visual search. The ceiling is the search, not the fingers.
Adult, touch typing untrained	35–50 WPM	Most people who use a computer daily land here without ever having been taught.
Adult, trained touch typist	55–75 WPM	Formal training mostly buys accuracy and consistency; the speed follows from those.
Data entry and admin roles	60–80 WPM	The 60 WPM floor in job adverts sits at roughly the 80th percentile of the general population.
Professional transcription	65–90 WPM	Sustained over hours at 97%+ accuracy, which is a much harder requirement than the peak speed.
Phone, two thumbs	25–40 WPM	Autocorrect and swipe input close some of the gap, but touch typing on glass has no tactile feedback to correct against.
Competitive typists	120–160 WPM	The 99.8th percentile and above on the model, and usually on tests drawn from the most frequent few hundred words.

How to move up the distribution

Three things account for almost all improvement, and they are worth doing in this order.

Stop looking at the keyboard. This is the single largest step available to anyone below 35 WPM, and it is worth more than every other change combined. It costs a frustrating fortnight.
Raise accuracy before speed. Each uncorrected error costs a whole word off net WPM. Going from 92% to 98% at unchanged raw speed is often worth 8 to 12 net WPM — more than most people gain from months of trying to type faster.
Practice the keys you actually miss. The per-key error heatmap on the typing test shows which characters you get wrong, keyed by the key you meant to hit. For most people the errors cluster on two or three keys, and drilling those is far more efficient than general practice.

When you want a clean measurement rather than a practice run, use the 25-word speed check for a quick figure, or the words per minute typing test if you want the arithmetic expanded step by step.

Average typing speed questions

What is the average typing speed?

About 40 words per minute for an adult on a full keyboard. That is the median of the distribution rather than a target: half of adults are slower, and the spread is wide — the 25th percentile is near 27 WPM and the 75th near 55 WPM.

What is the average typing speed for a professional typist?

65 to 80 WPM sustained, at accuracy above 97%. The accuracy requirement is what separates professional from merely fast: at 95% accuracy a 70 WPM typist is leaving several errors a minute, which in transcription or data entry costs more than the speed is worth.

Is 60 WPM fast?

Yes, by ordinary standards — around the 80th percentile. It is also the floor most data-entry and administrative job adverts specify, which is not a coincidence: the requirement is set where it excludes the slower half of applicants without excluding most competent ones.

What is the average typing speed on a phone?

Substantially lower than on a physical keyboard — most people lose 20 to 30 WPM. Two thumbs on a modern touch keyboard with autocorrect is faster than most people expect, but it is a different measurement and should not be compared to a desktop score.

Does typing speed decline with age?

Less than people assume. Reaction time and raw finger speed do decline, but experienced typists compensate by reading further ahead and planning more keystrokes at a time, which offsets most of it. Practice history predicts typing speed far better than age does.

Where do these percentiles come from?

They are a model, not a survey. The curve is anchored on the commonly cited 40 WPM adult average and stretched to match the long right tail that large online typing corpora consistently show. It is stated as a model everywhere it appears on this site, because publishing a made-up survey would be worse than publishing nothing.

Other instruments on this bench

Testing the hardware rather than the person? device tests — scroll, touch, refresh rate and input latency lives on a sister site. And if you want to see through someone else’s eyes rather than screen your own, use the simulate how an image looks to a protan, deutan or tritan viewer.