Statistics · Typing Test
Typing Test statistics
The whole distribution, where the numbers come from, and a calculator that places your own score inside it.
Where your score falls
Type a number to place it in the distribution below.
The percentile bands
| Band | Score | Percentile |
|---|---|---|
| Top 1% | ≥ 120 wpm | 99th |
| Top 5% | ≥ 95 wpm | 95th |
| Top 15% | ≥ 80 wpm | 85th |
| Top 30% | ≥ 65 wpm | 70th |
| Median | ≥ 52 wpm | 50th |
| Bottom 25% | ≥ 40 wpm | 25th |
| Bottom 10% | ≥ 30 wpm | 10th |
Bands follow Dhakal et al., CHI 2018 — 136 million keystrokes from 168,000 typists, mean 51.56 WPM.
Typing speed by group
| Group | Typical WPM | Accuracy expected |
|---|---|---|
| Beginner, hunt and peck | 20–35 | Variable |
| Average adult | 45–55 | 92–95% |
| Comfortable touch typist | 60–75 | 95–97% |
| Office professional | 65–80 | 97%+ |
| Data entry or transcription | 80–110 | 98%+ |
| Competitive typist | 120–160 | 97%+ |
Anchored on Dhakal et al., CHI 2018 — 136 million keystrokes from 168,000 typists, mean 51.56 WPM.
Why your device matters
- Mechanical keyboards actuate before bottoming out and usually poll at 1000 Hz; membrane boards debounce for several milliseconds and can genuinely drop keystrokes at speed.
- Phone keyboards are a different skill entirely. A fast thumb typist reaches 40 to 60 WPM, well under the same person on a full keyboard.
- Layout matters less than people claim. Controlled studies find small gains for Dvorak and Colemak, and most of the difference between typists is practice.
How we will replace these numbers
The bands above come from other people’s published datasets, named under each table. They are the honest option while this site is new: quoting a percentile from a handful of our own samples would be worse than quoting someone else’s from millions.
Once a test holds more than a thousand clean samples of its own, the percentile switches to our data and starts showing the sample size next to it. Runs that lost focus or looked automated never enter that pool — see how we measure.
Questions
What is the average typing test score?
The median is 52 wpm. Half of players score better than that and half score worse.
What is a good typing speed?
The average across a large research sample is about 52 WPM. Above 65 is faster than 70% of typists, above 80 is top 15%, and above 95 is top 5%. Professional transcriptionists work at 90 to 120.
What is the difference between net and raw WPM?
Raw WPM counts every keystroke you made. Net WPM subtracts the errors you left uncorrected. Net is the honest figure, and it is what employers mean when they ask for a typing speed.
How is a word counted?
As five characters including spaces, the standard used in typing research for a century. It makes results comparable across languages and across texts of different word lengths.