Fact · Typing and writing speed
25sources
The text entry speed by input method dataset draws on 25 distinct sources.
Calculated from 57 data points on October 19, 2026
- How it is calculated
- Count of the distinct sources behind the dataset's 57 rows: 25.
A statistic of the dataset Speech vs Typing Speed: Text Entry Rates Compared, calculated by code from its published rows.
Calculated from
- In the 2024 blind-user study, average typing speed on the default smartphone keyboard without word prediction was 1.87 words per minute.
- In the results section of the blind-user study, average typing speed was 1.87 words per minute without word prediction and 1.63 with it.
- In a three-week field study of 30 people typing in their own apps, the mean typing speed was 32.1 words per minute.
- In a 2024 BrainGate study, one participant's copy task was decoded at his self-paced speaking rate of 31.6 words per minute.
- In the 2024 BrainGate study, the participant typed with a gyroscopic head mouse at 6.3 correct words per minute, with a standard deviation of 1.3.
- In the 2026 Nature Medicine study, the participant communicated with the speech BCI at home at an average rate of 56 words per minute over almost two years of use.
- In a 2026 copy task, the participant's silent speech was decoded at an average of 49.7 words per minute, with accuracy of 96.5 percent.
- In the same 2026 copy task, the participant's vocalized speech was decoded at an average of 30.6 words per minute, with accuracy above 99 percent.
- In a user study of the TwoStick joystick text entry method, entry rates started at 4.3 words per minute and reached 14.9 words per minute after five hours of practice, as reported by Castellucci and MacKenzie in 2008.
- In the same task, typists who had not learned touch typing entered text at an average of 58.93 words per minute.
- In the transcription task, touch typists entered text at an average of 57.8 words per minute.
- In a 2014 study of 300 university students in South Africa, the mean handwriting speed in a short copying task was 22.85 words per minute.
- In a longitudinal study with 12 blind participants, the dissertation reports an average entry speed of 7.5 words per minute on a QWERTY keyboard with VoiceOver.
- Guinness World Records lists Mark Kislingbury of Houston at 360 words per minute with 97.23 percent accuracy, set at the NCRA's 2004 summer convention.
- Compiled norms show handwriting copying rates of about 5 words per minute in first grade, rising to about 16 by the end of middle school.
- In the same two-minute tasks, Japanese university students typed Japanese at 17 words per minute on cellphones, against 10 on onscreen QWERTY keyboards.
- In a two-minute transcription task, Japanese university students typed Japanese at 23 words per minute on desktop PCs.
- In the same study, nonstandard typists averaged 65.63 words per minute.
- In the Vanderbilt study, standard (touch) typists averaged 79.99 words per minute.
- A second brain-computer interface study decoded attempted silent speech into text at a median of 78 words per minute with a median word error rate of 25 percent.
- Participants aged 10 to 19 typed the fastest of all age groups on phones, with a mean of 39.6 words per minute.
- Participants aged 20 to 29 averaged 36.5 words per minute on phones.
- Participants aged 30 to 39 averaged 32.2 words per minute on phones.
- Participants aged 40 to 49 averaged 28.9 words per minute on phones.
- Participants aged 50 to 59 averaged 26.3 words per minute on phones, the lowest of the age groups in Table 4.
- Participants under 10 years old were the slowest age group on phones, with a mean of 24.3 words per minute.
- In the Palin study, people who reported gesture (swipe) typing averaged 32.2 words per minute overall, against 34.8 for people who used no intelligent text entry feature.
- In an online study of 37,370 volunteers typing on their own phones, the average speed was 36.2 words per minute, with 2.3 percent uncorrected errors.
- Native speakers of English were the fastest group by English experience, with a mean of 37.8 words per minute on phones.
- Participants who never type in English were the slowest group by English experience, with a mean of 25.6 words per minute on phones.
- In the Palin study, people who reported word prediction alone averaged 32.8 words per minute, against 34.8 for people who used no intelligent text entry feature.
- In the Palin study, people who had taken a touch typing course for desktop keyboards averaged 35.7 words per minute on phones, slightly slower than the 36.4 of those who had not.
- In the Palin study, participants who reported using two fingers averaged 37.7 words per minute, significantly faster than the 29.2 of those who used only one finger.
- Typing with two thumbs was the fastest phone technique in the study, at a mean of 38.02 words per minute.
- In the U.S. subsample of the phone study, participants aged 20 to 29 averaged 39.0 words per minute, slightly above the 38.0 for ages 10 to 19.
- In the U.S. subsample, men averaged 37.4 words per minute on phones.
- In the U.S. subsample, women averaged 34.6 words per minute on phones.
- The record for fast writing in Pitman shorthand is 350 words per minute, set in a two-minute test by Nathan Behrin in 1922.
- In an analysis of 506,024 typing speed tests taken on Ratatype in April 2026, the median typing speed fell in the range of 30 to 40 words per minute, which Ratatype rounds to about 35.
- In the same study, Mandarin Chinese entered by speech reached 123 words per minute, against 43 words per minute with the Pinyin keyboard, 2.87 times faster.
- In a controlled study on an iPhone, English text entered by speech reached 153 words per minute, against 52 words per minute on the built-in keyboard, 2.93 times faster.
- In the same study, Mandarin Chinese text entered with the built-in Pinyin keyboard reached 43 words per minute, against 123 words per minute by speech.
- In the same controlled study on an iPhone, English text entered on the built-in QWERTY keyboard reached 52 words per minute, against 153 words per minute by speech.
- The average typing rates of the study's participants on plain text were 23, 35 and 40 words per minute for the slow, average and fast typists.
- In a study of 136 million keystrokes from an online typing test, the average participant typed 51.56 words per minute, with a standard deviation of 20.2.
- In Typing.com's survey of full-time workers, those who typed with all 10 fingers averaged 54.6 words per minute on a one-minute typing test, and 61 percent of respondents used that method.
- In Typing.com's survey of full-time workers, male baby boomers were the slowest group by generation and gender, averaging 38 words per minute on a one-minute typing test.
- In Typing.com's survey of full-time workers, those who typed with five to nine fingers averaged 54.7 words per minute on a one-minute typing test, just faster than those who used all 10 fingers.
- In Typing.com's survey of full-time workers, the fewer than 5 percent who mainly looked at the keyboard while typing averaged 39.5 words per minute on a one-minute typing test, the slowest of the three methods the survey compared.
- In Typing.com's survey of full-time workers, those who mainly typed without looking down at the keyboard averaged 61 words per minute on a one-minute typing test, about 17 words per minute faster than those who looked at both the keyboard and the screen.
- In the same 2017 dissertation, the average typing speed of the control group rose from 8.3 to 15 words per minute, and its accuracy rose from 44 to 70 percent.
- In a 2017 master's dissertation, the average typing speed of the gamified group rose from 8 to 25 words per minute by the end of the training, and its accuracy rose from 43 to 93 percent.
- A brain-computer interface decoded one participant's attempted speech into text at 62 words per minute, with a 23.8 percent word error rate on a 125,000-word vocabulary.
- In the 2010 Ultimate Typing Championship final, Sean Wrona typed a standard 574-word text at 163 words per minute, which Wikipedia calls an unofficial world record.
- Eight to ten days after open carpal tunnel release, average typing speed fell to 45.2 words per minute, a drop the authors call statistically significant.
- Before open carpal tunnel release, the 27 patients in a 2016 study typed at an average of 49.7 words per minute on a short online test.
- At 12 weeks after open carpal tunnel release, the group's average typing speed reached 53.5 words per minute.