How this calculator works
Enter a word count and pick a reading speed to estimate how long a piece of writing takes to read silently. This is the same calculation blogs and publishing platforms use to show a "5 min read" label, just with the reading speed made explicit instead of hidden in the page's code.
Reading speed varies a great deal by person, by familiarity with the subject, and by how technical or dense the text is. The 'average' speed here is grounded in published research rather than a marketing estimate: a 2019 meta-analysis by Marc Brysbaert reviewing 190 studies and over 18,000 participants put average adult silent reading of English non-fiction at about 238 words per minute, noticeably slower than the 250-300 wpm figures commonly repeated in style guides and blogging tools.
The formula
Reading time (minutes) = word count ÷ reading speed (words per minute)Speeds used: slow 150 wpm, average 238 wpm (Brysbaert, 2019, non-fiction silent reading), fast 300 wpm. These describe silent reading of ordinary prose; technical, dense, or unfamiliar text is read more slowly than these figures suggest.
Worked example: a full-length novel
- A typical novel runs about 90,000 words.
- At the average silent-reading speed of 238 words per minute: 90,000 ÷ 238 ≈ 378.2 minutes.
- Convert to hours and minutes: 378.2 minutes ≈ 6 hours and 18 minutes of total reading time.
- At a slower pace of 150 words per minute, the same novel takes 90,000 ÷ 150 = 600 minutes, or 10 full hours.
Frequently asked questions
Why does this calculator use 238 words per minute instead of the more common 200 or 250?
238 wpm is the adult silent-reading average for non-fiction English text from Brysbaert's 2019 peer-reviewed meta-analysis of 190 studies, the largest review of reading-speed research to date. Earlier estimates of 250-300 wpm often trace back to smaller or older studies; the slow and fast presets here still cover that wider range for readers who read faster or slower than average.
Does reading speed differ between fiction and non-fiction?
Yes, slightly. The same meta-analysis found fiction is typically read a bit faster than non-fiction, around 260 wpm on average, likely because fiction tends to use shorter, more common words. This calculator uses the non-fiction figure as the default average since it applies more broadly to articles, reports and study material.
Why do blog posts often show a shorter reading time than this calculator gives?
Many blogging platforms use faster assumed reading speeds, sometimes 250-300 wpm or higher, to make articles look like a quicker commitment. There is no single correct reading speed — this calculator uses a research-backed average instead of a marketing-friendly one.
Does this account for time spent looking at images, charts or code blocks?
No. It only estimates the time to read the running text itself. Images, diagrams, code samples and tables typically take extra time to absorb that a word count alone does not capture, so actual reading time for content-heavy pages will run longer than the estimate.
How is this different from a speech time calculator?
Speech time estimates how long it takes to say words aloud to an audience, which is much slower than silent reading — a typical presenting pace is 110-160 words per minute, well under half of the average silent-reading speed used here, because speaking involves physically producing each word and often includes deliberate pauses.