Reading Time Calculator

In short Reading time is word count divided by a reading speed, and the honest version of the answer is that the speed depends heavily on the reader and the material. This tool gives three: 150 words per minute for dense or technical prose, 238 for average adult silent reading of English non-fiction, and 350 for skimming familiar material. The 238 figure is the one to trust as a default — it comes from Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies covering nearly eighteen thousand readers, and it replaced the older 200 and 250 numbers that circulated for decades without a source. A 1,000-word article is therefore a little over four minutes at average speed, and between three and seven depending on who is reading it. Two things the number cannot capture: reading on a phone is measurably slower than on paper, and anything a reader has to stop and think about — a table, an equation, a code block — costs far more time than its word count suggests. That is why a technical piece consistently takes longer than its estimate says, and why the slow figure exists.