How Long Does It Take to Type 1,000 Words?
About 19 minutes at the average speed measured across 168,960 typists. See times for 250 to 5,000 words at 20 to 100 WPM, and how to find your own number.
Typing 1,000 words takes about 19 minutes at an average speed. A large online study measured a mean of 51.56 words per minute (WPM) across 168,960 people, which works out to 19 minutes and 24 seconds. At 40 WPM it takes 25 minutes, and at 80 WPM it takes 12 and a half.
That is the time to type text that already exists. Writing it from scratch takes longer, because you also have to decide what to say.
Typing time by word count and speed
The sum is simple: minutes = words ÷ WPM. These times assume you type without stopping, and they are rounded to the nearest second.
| Words | 20 WPM | 40 WPM | 60 WPM | 80 WPM | 100 WPM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 250 | 12 min 30 s | 6 min 15 s | 4 min 10 s | 3 min 8 s | 2 min 30 s |
| 500 | 25 min | 12 min 30 s | 8 min 20 s | 6 min 15 s | 5 min |
| 1,000 | 50 min | 25 min | 16 min 40 s | 12 min 30 s | 10 min |
| 1,500 | 1 h 15 min | 37 min 30 s | 25 min | 18 min 45 s | 15 min |
| 2,000 | 1 h 40 min | 50 min | 33 min 20 s | 25 min | 20 min |
| 3,000 | 2 h 30 min | 1 h 15 min | 50 min | 37 min 30 s | 30 min |
| 5,000 | 4 h 10 min | 2 h 5 min | 1 h 23 min 20 s | 1 h 2 min 30 s | 50 min |
What counts as an average typing speed?
The best public figure we found comes from Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes, a 2018 study from Aalto University and the University of Cambridge. It looked at 168,960 people who took an online typing test.
- Average: 51.56 WPM, with a standard deviation of about 20 WPM. People vary a lot.
- Fastest 10%: averaged 89.56 WPM, and some people reached 120 WPM or more.
- Slowest 10%: averaged 20.91 WPM.
- Training: people who reported typing training averaged 54.35 WPM, against 49.00 WPM for those who didn't. That gap is small next to the spread between typists.
The sample has limits. These were volunteers from a typing-test site, with a mean age of 24.5, so they may be faster than people in general. They also read and memorized one short sentence at a time before typing it, which is easier than working through a long document.
On a phone, expect less. A 2019 study of 37,370 volunteers averaged 36.2 WPM on mobile, which puts 1,000 words at about 27 minutes and 37 seconds.
Why your real time will be longer
The table is a floor, for four reasons.
- A "word" in WPM is not a real word. Typing speed counts five characters as one word, spaces included. Real text often runs longer. A sample draft we use in our own demo has 93 words and 496 characters, or 5.3 characters per word, so it takes about 7% longer than its word count suggests. Text with long words takes longer still.
- Mistakes cost time. Every typo you fix adds keystrokes, and in the study slower typists generally made more errors.
- Your eyes move. Copying from a printout or a second window means looking away from what you have typed.
- People stop. Nobody types for an hour without a break. For anything over a few thousand words, plan for rest.
How to find your own number
A general average won't tell you much about you. Five minutes will.
- Pick a passage you haven't typed before, about as hard as your real text.
- Set a timer for five minutes and type it into a blank document. Fix mistakes as you normally would.
- Paste what you typed into the Word Counter, then divide the word count by 5. That is your WPM.
- Divide your target length by that number.
For example, if you typed 230 words, your speed is 46 WPM, and 1,500 words will take you about 33 minutes.
Typing is not the same as writing
Most results for this question mix two different things. The table above covers your hands. Writing 1,000 words also means reading, planning, drafting and revising, and how long that takes depends far too much on the topic for us to give you an honest number.
If the real problem is length rather than time, How to Cut Word Count Without Losing Your Argument may help more than typing faster.
If the words are already written
Don't retype finished text by hand. You have two faster options.
- Paste it. This takes about a second. If the formatting comes across badly, see how to paste into Google Docs without formatting.
- Have it typed. AutoType is our Chrome extension for Google Docs. It enters text one character at a time, at a speed you set. It was still waiting on its Chrome Web Store release when we wrote this.
We timed AutoType on a real Google Doc, with natural typing effects off. These were short runs on one document, so treat them as rough.
| Speed setting | Measured speed | 1,000 words at five characters each |
|---|---|---|
| 50 WPM | 49 WPM | about 20 min |
| 120 WPM | 110 WPM | about 9 min |
| 300 WPM | 253 WPM | about 4 min |
Pasting is still far quicker, so an auto typer only makes sense when you want the text to build up gradually, such as when you're recording a demo.
Common questions
How long does it take to type 500 words? 12 minutes and 30 seconds at 40 WPM, or about 9 minutes and 42 seconds at the study's 51.56 WPM average.
How long does it take to type 2,000 words? 50 minutes at 40 WPM, or about 39 minutes at 51.56 WPM.
How long does it take to type a five-page paper? Page counts depend on font, size and spacing, so count the words first. Paste the paper into the Word Counter and find that length in the table above.
Is 40 WPM a good typing speed? It's below the study's average of 51.56 WPM but well inside the normal range. The slowest 10% averaged about 21 WPM and the fastest 10% about 90 WPM.
Does typing speed matter if I'm writing something new? Less than you might expect, because thinking takes longer than typing. Speed matters most when you're copying or re-entering text that already exists.
