Reading Time Calculator
Estimate how long your text takes to read silently and to read aloud, at any words-per-minute speed. Free, instant and browser-based.
Time by reading speed
Silent reading averages 238 words per minute for adults reading non-fiction in English; reading aloud is closer to 130.
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Times update live as you type.
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What is Reading Time Calculator?
Reading Time Calculator estimates how long a piece of text takes to get through — silently, and read aloud. Paste your text and the estimate updates as you type, along with the word, character, sentence and paragraph counts and a rough page count.
Reading speed is not one number. Research on adult silent reading of English non-fiction puts the average around 238 words per minute, with slower readers nearer 150 and fast ones past 300 — so the tool shows all three side by side rather than pretending to a single answer, and the slider lets you set your own rate. Reading aloud is much slower, about 130 words per minute, which is the figure to use for a script, a talk or a voiceover.
Short texts are reported in seconds. A 60-word intro takes about fifteen seconds to read, and rounding that up to "1 min read" — as most reading-time widgets do — is misleading in the one direction that matters.
All counting happens locally in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, and nothing is stored.
How to Use Reading Time Calculator
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1
Paste your text
Type or paste the text, or upload a .txt file. Counts and times update live.
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2
Pick a reading speed
Choose slow, average or fast, or drag the slider to an exact words-per-minute rate.
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3
Read the estimates
See the silent reading time, the read-aloud time, and how the two compare across speeds.
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4
Copy the summary
Copy every figure at once to paste into a brief, a CMS field or a script.