How to Calculate Words Per Minute (WPM)
Words per minute, or WPM, is the standard measure of typing speed. It looks simple, but it isn’t a count of the actual words you typed. Knowing how it works makes your score much more useful.
Why a “word” is always 5 characters
If WPM counted real words, a test full of short words like “it” and “on” would give a higher score than one with long words like “temperature”. To make scores comparable, typing tests treat every 5 characters as one standard word. Spaces count as characters too.
The formula
WPM = (characters ÷ 5) ÷ minutes
Here are three examples:
| Time | Characters | Calculation | WPM |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 minute | 300 | 300 ÷ 5 ÷ 1 | 60 |
| 30 seconds | 200 | 200 ÷ 5 ÷ 0.5 | 80 |
| 3 minutes | 1,050 | 1,050 ÷ 5 ÷ 3 | 70 |
For a test shorter than a minute, convert the time to minutes first. Thirty seconds is 0.5 minutes.
WPM and raw WPM
The formula needs one more decision: which characters count?
- Raw WPM counts every character, right or wrong.
- WPM counts only the correct characters.
Say you finish a one-minute test with 310 characters, and 10 of them are wrong. Your raw WPM is 62, and your WPM is 60. A large gap tells you that mistakes are costing you speed.
How this site calculates your score
Our typing test counts the characters in your finished text when the time runs out. Spaces between words count, and a mistake you corrected counts as correct, because the final text is right.
The time you spent correcting it is already reflected in your score, since you typed fewer characters overall. Corrections do lower your accuracy, though, which counts every keystroke.
Why your score differs between websites
Typing tests make different choices about these details. Some subtract a penalty for each error, some count only fully correct words, and some don’t let you go back and fix mistakes. They also use different text, and common words are easier to type than unusual ones or punctuation.
So the same person can get noticeably different scores on two sites. To track your progress, keep using the same test at the same length, and compare your scores over time.