Fact · Voice and AI
51.56words per minute
In a study of 136 million keystrokes from an online typing test, the average typing speed of participants was 51.56 words per minute.
Checked against its source on October 17, 2026
In the source's own words
“The average WPM value for participants is 51.56 (SD = 20.2).”
Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes, Vivek Dhakal et al., CHI 2018, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2018, Results: Words per minute.
Open the original (DOI 10.1145/3173574.3174220)- What it measures
- Volunteers typed sentences in an online test, and the speed counts correct text per minute. The volunteers were mostly young adults, and many had taken a typing course.
- What it does not show
- Typing in an online test with short sentences, not a long document. The speed is for a computer keyboard, not a phone.
Source
Used to calculate
- At the average typing speed of 51.56 words per minute in the large online typing study, typing a finished 1,000-word answer takes about 19.4 minutes.
- The 2026 home average of 56 words per minute is about 9 percent above the 51.56 words per minute average typist in a large online test.
- The 60 words per minute minimum in the 2025 scribe posting is about 16 percent faster than the 51.56 words per minute average of the large online typing study.
- Speech input at 153 words per minute is about three times the 51.56 words per minute average from the online typing study. The two studies used different people and settings, so the ratio is a rough comparison.
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