Typing Speed Statistics: Average WPM by Group

Most adults type at a moderate pace when they are tested on a computer keyboard. Across the published figures for general adults, the median is 51.6 words per minute ¹. For office and professional workers it is 54.6 words per minute ². Skilled typists reach roughly double that, and beginners and children type at less than half of it.

The dataset holds 14 data points from 6 sources. It covers measured speeds on physical desktop and laptop keyboards. Phones and tablets are excluded. The full table is below, and our guide to typing speed explains how speed is measured and what counts as fast.

The typical adult types at a moderate pace, but the test takers skew fast

The largest source is an online typing test studied by Dhakal and colleagues. Its participants averaged 51.56 words per minute ³. The same study gives the spread: the slowest typists were below about 26 words per minute ⁴, and the fastest were above about 78 words per minute ⁵. So the middle of this crowd spans a wide band, not a narrow one.

A second large dataset points lower. Ratatype's analysis of a very large set of online tests found a median it rounds to about 30 to 40 words per minute ⁶. Ratatype publishes a median and Dhakal and colleagues publish a mean, so the two are not the same statistic. Speed data are usually skewed by a tail of very fast typists, which pulls a mean above a median. That alone explains part of the gap.

Workers split by method more than by job

The Typing.com survey of full-time workers gives the clearest look at office and professional workers. Workers who typed with all fingers averaged 54.6 words per minute ⁹. Those who used some fingers, but not all, averaged 54.7 words per minute ¹⁰. The two figures are effectively the same, and the source's own caveat says the gap is too small to read as real.

What does separate workers is whether they watch the keys. People who mainly typed without looking down averaged 61 words per minute ¹¹. The small group who mainly looked at the keyboard averaged 39.5 words per minute ¹². That is a very large gap, and it is the largest difference among adults in the table. It is an association: the survey does not show that looking down causes slower typing.

Age also shows up. Male baby boomers were the slowest generation and gender group in that survey, at 38 words per minute ¹³. That is a single figure from a small slice of the sample, so treat it as a hint.

Touch typing alone does not guarantee speed

A controlled study by Feit and colleagues compared people who had learned touch typing with those who had not, on a text copying task. Touch typists averaged 57.8 words per minute ⁸. Typists without formal training averaged 58.93 words per minute ⁷. The paper reports that the difference was not statistically significant, and the non-touch group was nominally ahead.

This looks like it contradicts the worker survey, where watching the keys went with much lower speed. It does not have to. The people in the lab study were experienced everyday typists who had developed their own efficient habits. The survey compared looking at the keys against not looking. The method label does not decide speed. What matters is how fluent the person has become.

The fastest typists are far above the middle

The fastest typists in the data are a separate group. Across its two figures, the median is 99 words per minute ¹⁴. The top of the online test went to 120 words per minute ¹⁵ or more. That figure comes from a very large sample, so it reflects the best of a very large crowd and not a typical expert.

Both figures describe thresholds within one test, so they say little about what a professional typist sustains over a working day. The dataset has no figure for professional typists as a group.

Children and students learning to type are far slower

Children and students show the lowest speeds in the data. A school study in Cape Town measured a group using a gamified typing course. Its average rose during training to 25 words per minute ¹⁶ by the end of training. The groups were small, they were not randomized, and the control group also improved considerably, so the gain cannot be credited to the game alone.

Japanese university students copying Japanese text on desktop computers averaged 23 words per minute ¹⁷. That figure is for a different writing system and an older generation of devices, and Japanese input needs a conversion step. It should not be compared directly with English figures.

Where the studies disagree

Three disagreements matter.

• Mean against median. The online test mean is 51.56 words per minute ³, and the Ratatype median is 30 to 40 words per minute ⁶. Different statistics, different test takers and different rules for errors make them hard to reconcile.
• Test against task. Copying a fixed text, as in the Feit study, removes the time spent thinking. Online tests use short sentences. Neither looks like writing an email or a report, where pauses to think cut the pace.
• Volunteers against the population. Everyone in the large datasets chose to take a typing test. The Dhakal source itself notes that frequent typists are over-represented, so the average there is higher than the population figure.

What the data cannot tell you

The rows do not show how fast people type while composing real documents. Almost all of them come from online tests or copying tasks. Only a few rows come from a controlled lab setting, and none measure long working sessions.

Several groups have no data at all. There are no figures here for older adults as a group, for people with disabilities, or for professional typists. The one older-adult hint is a single survey slice of male baby boomers. The Typing.com figures are undated, come from a vendor survey of computer-literate workers recruited online, and excluded extreme speeds. Several sources do not say whether errors are deducted from the speed. Country is rarely stated, and the sources differ in language, so cross-country comparison is not possible.

What this means if you choose how to write

Treat the median figures above as a realistic benchmark for a practiced adult, and expect casual typists to fall below them. Do not count on the high figures: reaching the speeds of the fastest typists takes sustained practice, and they were measured on short test sentences.

Two points are practical. First, looking at the keys is the clearest marker of slower typing in these data, so building the habit of looking at the screen is worth the effort for anyone who types often. Second, typing speed on a keyboard is only a starting point for choosing a writing method. Real writing includes thinking time and corrections, which these figures leave out. If your typing sits well below the figures above, or typing is painful, other input methods may suit you better. Our guide to typing speed compares the options and shows how speeds on other devices and by voice compare.