Fact · Typing and writing speed
6sources
The typing speed on computer keyboards dataset draws on 6 distinct sources.
Calculated from 14 data points on October 19, 2026
- How it is calculated
- Count of the distinct sources behind the dataset's 14 rows: 6.
A statistic of the dataset Typing Speed Statistics: Average WPM by Group, calculated by code from its published rows.
Calculated from
- In a study of 136 million keystrokes from an online typing test, the average typing speed of participants was 51.56 words per minute.
- In a study of 136 million keystrokes from an online typing test, typists faster than 90 percent of participants were those above about 78 words per minute.
- The fastest typists in the online study reached 120 words per minute or more.
- In the same online study, the slowest 10 percent of typists were those below about 26 words per minute.
- 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 two-minute transcription task, Japanese university students typed Japanese at 23 words per minute on desktop PCs.
- 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 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 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.