What's the average reading speed?
An adult reading English non-fiction silently reads about 238 words per minute on average, and about 260 for fiction. Reading aloud, it’s about 183. Those figures come from a meta-analysis of 190 studies and more than 18,000 readers (Brysbaert, 2019).
It depends on who’s reading, and what
These figures are for native speakers: the same review finds lower rates for children, older adults and people reading in a second language. Fiction runs a bit faster than non-fiction, mostly because its words are shorter.
How to measure yours
- Pick a text you haven’t read, non-fiction, of normal difficulty: an article, not a contract.
- Read at your usual pace for one minute, with a timer.
- Count the words you read. For a long stretch, count one line and multiply by the number of lines.
- That number is your words per minute.
- Now the part that matters: without looking, say in two or three sentences what the text was about. If you can’t, the number doesn’t mean much.
- Try again another day with a different text. Your result will move with the topic, how tired you are and the font, and that’s normal.
Can you read much faster?
A major review of the research is clear: there’s a trade-off between speed and understanding. It’s unlikely that anyone goes from about 250 words per minute to 500 or 750 and still understands the text as well as before (Rayner et al., 2016). What does keep understanding high while you pick up pace, according to that same review, is practicing reading and becoming a more skilled language user, for example through a bigger vocabulary. Language skill is at the heart of reading speed.
What this number doesn’t tell you
- Reading fast isn’t the same as reading well. That’s why step 5 matters more than step 4.
- A hard text takes longer, and it should.
- Today’s number is a starting point, not a grade.
Sources: Brysbaert, M. (2019), Journal of Memory and Language 109, 104047 · Rayner, K. et al. (2016), Psychological Science in the Public Interest 17(1), 4-34. If you spot a mistake, write to us and we’ll fix it.
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