Typing · 2 min
Two Minute Typing Test
Two minutes. This is the length most employers use.
Start typing. The timer starts on your first keystroke.
very will are sound think she i we her picture how i must when before ask kind work i through play great why two home are we give she people us up after him ask mean tell him an did some other will picture follow will been each know sound ask read big boy if three way get had live look up kind use but boy kind about much down as i letter where set land so se
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What this measures
Two minutes is the standard length for an employment typing assessment, which is why it is worth knowing your number at this length rather than only at fifteen seconds.
Concentration, not finger speed, is what fails first here. Most people hold their pace for about ninety seconds and then start making errors, and the consistency figure will show you exactly where that happened.
Accuracy matters more than speed on a real assessment. A 70 WPM result at 98% accuracy beats an 85 WPM result at 90%, because uncorrected errors in real work cost more time than they save.
What is a good typing test score
| 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.
Full typing test statistics, by age and device →
Questions
What typing speed do employers want?
Most office roles ask for 40 to 50 WPM with high accuracy. Data entry and transcription roles typically want 60 to 80 WPM, and specialist transcription work asks for 90 or more.
Why does my speed drop after ninety seconds?
Concentration rather than fingers. Sustained typing is a focus task, and most people show a small accuracy decline in the last third of a two-minute test.
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.
What is consistency?
How much your speed varied from second to second during the test. A high figure means you held a steady pace; a low one means you had bursts and stalls, which usually points to specific keys giving you trouble.
Does the keyboard layout matter?
Less than people claim. Alternative layouts such as Dvorak and Colemak show small gains in controlled studies, and most of the speed difference between typists comes from practice and technique rather than layout.
Try next
Results are stored in your browser only. Read how we measure if you want the details of the timing, or go back to the standard typing test.