Measure how fast you actually type. Pick 15, 30 or 60 seconds, type the passage as it appears, and you'll get your words per minute, your accuracy, and the gap between your raw and effective speed. Correct characters turn green, mistakes turn red, and a caret shows exactly where you are in the passage at all times. If you type through the whole passage before your time is up, another one is appended automatically and the test just keeps going, so the length you picked always gets fully used no matter how fast you type.
Press start, then just begin typing — the clock does not start until your first keystroke, so reading the passage first and getting your fingers positioned costs you nothing. Use Backspace to fix mistakes as you go. On a phone, tap the passage to bring up your on-screen keyboard; the test works with soft keyboards as well as hardware ones, and if the keyboard gets dismissed mid-test, tapping the passage again reopens it without losing your progress. Live figures for your current WPM, accuracy and time remaining update continuously while you type, so you can see in real time whether you're pushing too fast for your accuracy or have room to speed up.
A "word" in typing measurement is defined as five characters, including spaces — not an actual English word. This matters: if real words were counted, a passage of short words would score far higher than one of long words and no two tests would be comparable to each other or to any other typing test online. Every serious typing benchmark, from the earliest paper tests to modern software, uses the five-character convention, and so does this one. It means your WPM figure here is directly comparable to WPM figures from other reputable typing tests, not just a number specific to this page.
Gross WPM is your raw speed — everything you typed, mistakes included, divided by the standard five-character word length. Net WPM subtracts uncorrected errors from that count and is the number that actually reflects useful, correct output, and it's the number used for your saved best score. The gap between the two is the single most useful thing on the results screen: a large gap means you're outrunning your accuracy and typing faster than you can actually type correctly, so slowing down slightly should raise your net score. A small gap means your speed and accuracy are already well matched, and you likely have room to push faster without much cost. Fixing a mistake with Backspace removes it from the error count entirely, because a corrected error costs you time but not correctness — this is deliberate, and it means careful correction is never held against you in the final number, only against your gross-versus-net speed.
The average adult types around 40 WPM. Regular computer users who type daily for work or study often reach 50–60 WPM without any deliberate practice. Above 80 WPM is genuinely fast typing by most standards, and professional transcriptionists and data-entry specialists commonly work in the 100–120 WPM range, sometimes higher. If you're typing below 40 WPM, the fastest route to improvement almost always comes from accuracy rather than raw speed — a single error usually costs far more time to notice and correct than a moment of more careful, deliberate typing would have cost in the first place.
Keep your fingers anchored on the home row and stop looking down at the keyboard; every glance away from the screen costs you far more time than the keystroke it was meant to save, and it breaks the rhythm that fast typing depends on. Aim for a steady, even rhythm rather than bursts of speed followed by corrections — consistent typing is faster over a full minute than fast typing that's constantly interrupted by backspacing. And practise accuracy first, deliberately typing a little slower than feels comfortable until mistakes become rare: speed reliably follows accuracy as your fingers learn the correct motions, far more than accuracy follows speed.
After each test, a Share Result button lets you copy or share your WPM and accuracy — useful for comparing scores with friends or tracking your own progress over time in a note somewhere. Your single best net WPM score is also saved automatically on your device and shown on the start screen, so every attempt after your first has something concrete to beat, even without creating an account or signing up for anything.