How do you use Monkeytype to type faster?

Use Monkeytype as a short, regular drill with an accuracy rule, not as a race against your last score. Keep errors low first, record your speed and accuracy together, practise the words you miss most, and stop each session after 15 to 30 minutes. Its figures are useful for tracking progress, but a test does not change how you type. The drill, repeated over days, is what does that.

This page is part of our guide to how to type faster, in the overview of typing speed.

Set the test so accuracy counts as much as speed

A speed figure on its own rewards errors. Monkeytype's accuracy is the number of correct inputs divided by all inputs, multiplied by 100 ¹. A mistake you fix still counts as an input, so it can lower the score. That matters because slower typists make more errors and then take a long time to find and correct them ². Error correction is one of the places speed is lost.

Monkeytype has a stop-on-error setting, and its code allows three values: off, word and letter ³. Use it when you are working on accuracy. Check the settings menu for what each value does, because the code we read lists the options but does not describe how each one behaves.

Read the speed number with its formula

Monkeytype turns characters into words by dividing the character count by five, then divides by the length of the test in minutes ⁴. So one word is five characters, the same convention our guide to typing speed uses for words per minute. Because the formula is simple, you can check any Monkeytype result by hand: count the characters, divide by five, and divide by the minutes.

The test also shows live feedback. Monkeytype describes itself as an attempt to give "real-time feedback on typos, speed, and accuracy" as you type ⁵. Use the live numbers to spot when errors start to climb. Slow down at that point, not at the end of the test.

Use the words you miss most for practice

Monkeytype can build its next practice test from the words you missed. Its code counts the misses for each word, sorts the list from most to fewest, and keeps only the top of that list ⁶. Those are the words that cost you the most correction time, so they are the right place to spend five minutes at the end of a session. Repeat them until you get a clean run, then move on.

Test words are not the words you write, and a random list may spend time on letter pairs you rarely type. The study of 136 million keystrokes found that letter pairs typed by different hands or fingers predict typing speed better than repeated letters do ⁷. That study did not test drills, so this is our reasoning, not a tested result: when you can, copy a passage of your own writing into a test, or practise the pairs that appear in your emails and notes.

Use the pace caret as a steady target, not a sprint

The pace caret is a marker that moves through the test at a chosen speed. Monkeytype's code allows a custom speed for it ⁸. Set the target a little above the speed you type cleanly, and keep it only while your errors stay low. When errors come back, drop the target to the last speed you could keep clean.

We found no controlled study of pace carets for typing, so treat this as a method to try. Judge it by your own error count, not by how it feels.

A session you can repeat

1. Pick one test length and keep it. A fixed length makes your scores comparable from one day to the next.
2. Type with the accuracy rule. Turn on stop-on-error for the first run, and note the errors you fix.
3. Write down speed and accuracy. A rise in speed that comes with a fall in accuracy is not progress.
4. Practise the missed words for about five minutes, until you can type them cleanly.
5. Stop at 15 to 30 minutes. Short daily sessions fit the spacing evidence in our guide to how to type faster, which favors short, spread-out practice over one long session.

Keep a simple log with the date, the test length, the speed, the accuracy and the words you practised. After two or three weeks, the log will show whether your clean speed is rising.

When Monkeytype is not the right tool

• For a job or an exam, use the test that the employer or exam names. Our page on which typing speed test is most accurate explains why scores from different tests do not match.
• If you hunt and peck, a test shows your speed but not which finger to use. The guide to touch typing covers finger placement.
• If your speed has not moved for weeks, the page on why typing speed is not improving lists the usual causes.
• If you are considering games, the page on whether typing games help summarizes what the evidence shows.

Monkeytype is useful because its numbers are easy to check and its feedback is immediate. Its figures are only as good as the habit behind them, so use it to watch your accuracy and your clean speed, and let those two numbers decide what to practise next.