Paste any block of text to see how long it takes to read, with an adjustable words-per-minute slider and a separate estimate for reading it aloud.
Knowing how long a piece takes to read helps you set expectations and pace your content correctly, whether it's a blog post or a live talk.
A "6 min read" label at the top of a post helps people decide whether to dive in now or save it for later.
The speaking time estimate helps you check a script against a strict time slot before you're on stage.
Adjust the words-per-minute slider to model a faster skimmer or a slower, careful reader.
Reading time estimates come from a simple, well-established formula: count the words, divide by a reading speed, convert to minutes and seconds. The part that actually matters is picking a realistic speed. Research on adult silent reading generally puts average comprehension-level reading somewhere around 200 to 250 words per minute for straightforward prose, which is why this tool defaults to 200 and lets you slide anywhere from 100 words per minute, closer to a careful or non-native reader working through denser material, up to 400, closer to fast skimming. Speaking time works differently and doesn't need a slider, because presentation and broadcast pacing is much more consistent: professional voice and presentation coaches commonly cite roughly 130 words per minute as a comfortable, clearly-enunciated speaking pace for a script read aloud, well below typical conversational speech, which runs faster but sacrifices clarity. That's why a paragraph that reads in under a minute silently can easily take close to two minutes once you're actually speaking it to a room. Sentence count is estimated from terminal punctuation, and word count simply splits on whitespace, so extra line breaks or spacing won't skew your numbers.
A commonly cited average for adult silent reading of straightforward text.
A typical clear, presentation-paced speaking speed.
Built on whitespace-separated word count, not character count.
It counts the words in your text and divides that by your chosen words-per-minute reading speed, then converts the result into minutes and seconds.
200 words per minute is a common average for adult silent reading, but you can drag the slider from 100 to 400 to match a slower or faster reader.
Speaking time is fixed at about 130 words per minute, a typical pace for reading a script aloud in a presentation, podcast or video, which is slower than most silent reading.
The estimate is based on whitespace-separated word count, so extra line breaks or spacing don't meaningfully change the result; sentence count is estimated separately from punctuation.
No. All counting happens locally in your browser using plain JavaScript, and your text is never sent to a server.
More free writing helpers from My Panda Toolbox.