Is Dvorak faster than QWERTY?

Not by a margin that we found in independent testing. Dvorak was patented in 1936 as a faster and more ergonomic alternative to QWERTY for English ¹, but we found no independent, controlled test that shows trained typists become much faster on it. The speed figure most often quoted, 74 percent faster, comes from the layout's own inventor. The one independent test we found showed that Dvorak typists matched their old speed after retraining, and did not beat it. If you want speed, the evidence does not support switching for that reason alone.

The 74 percent figure comes from the inventor's own Navy test

In 1944 the U.S. Navy selected fourteen typists to see whether retraining them to the Dvorak layout was feasible ². August Dvorak reported that by the end of the study his typists were 74 percent faster on Dvorak than on QWERTY, and that their accuracy had increased by 68 percent ³.

Those are the inventor's figures. A later summary of the evidence says that investigation showed the Navy experiments were at best biased and at worst fabricated ⁴. That does not prove Dvorak was slower. It does mean the 74 percent figure cannot be used as independent evidence, however often it appears in articles about the layout.

The one independent test we found showed no speed advantage

The General Services Administration commissioned a study by Earle Strong in the mid-1950s. It found that after sufficient training, the Dvorak typists matched their previous QWERTY speeds but did not surpass them ⁵. Regaining the old speed took 100 hours of retraining ⁶, more than the Navy had claimed.

Economists Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis reviewed this record and concluded that the best-documented experiments and recent ergonomic studies suggest little or no advantage for Dvorak ⁷. We checked the claim through the encyclopedia article that reports it, not the economists' own article.

It depends on how much time you can spend and what you measure

The cost is the part you can predict. The independent retraining took 100 hours before the typists were back at their old speed, so plan for weeks of practice, not days. The Navy figures came from the inventor, so do not plan around them.

A switch is also harder for anyone who types on shared machines. Colleagues' keyboards and public terminals usually stay on QWERTY, so you will switch back and forth for a long time. If you type only on your own computer, the cost is lower.

What to do if you want to try Dvorak

1. Measure your current speed and accuracy on one fixed test, using the method in how typing speed is measured.
2. List the keyboard shortcuts you use every day, and check which ones move on Dvorak before you switch, since the layout changes where the letter keys sit. Then decide whether to relearn them or remap them.
3. Practice on a fixed schedule, and keep QWERTY for work with deadlines. Expect weeks of slower typing.
4. Measure again after a few weeks on the same test. If your speed has not recovered and you are not more comfortable, go back to QWERTY. Nothing in the evidence says you will end up faster.

If comfort is your main reason, the question is different. Colemak is another alternative. It moves 17 keys from their QWERTY positions and keeps many popular shortcuts in place ⁸, and the question on whether Colemak is worth learning covers it. For the history of the layout you are already using, see why keyboards use QWERTY. The full comparison of the three layouts is in the guide on keyboard layouts compared, and the wider picture of speed is in the typing speed overview.